 The FedNow instant payment platform is upon us. It's going to be released on July 2023, which is this year. So the question we have to ask ourselves is FedNow, the instant payment system, good or bad for Bitcoin and digital assets? Me personally, I think it's good and I'm going to explain to you why. So the first thing you have to understand is what the heck is FedNow? So this was actually brought to my attention. I was a video on FedNow and it's three minutes long. It's kind of boring, but I'll link in the description. You can watch the whole thing. I was going to show you the first 40 seconds. So just check this out. Today, people and businesses expect to make and receive payments at the click of a button any time of the day, every day of the year. And most expect their financial institutions to offer or support payment services that meet the speed and convenience they seek. In fact, three and four businesses and two-thirds of consumers surveyed think it's important that their bank or credit union offer faster payments. Financial institutions interested in meeting these demands can use the federal reserves of coming FedNow service to build innovative payment offerings that can help them retain and attract customers and avoid losing out to the competition. Competition. On the very last thing that I was said, competition. Now, we are on crypto and digital assets. Of course, we will think, well, of course, the competition, Rob, is Bitcoin and Ethereum and Shiba Inu and Ripple and whatever else that you want to throw in there, XRP. But in all honesty, it's everything that has to do with payments. It could be Zell, it could be Cash App, it could be Stripe, it could be PayPal. It's everything for finality. Look, I'm in America and everybody still keeps banker hours. So for me, for payments to zip around, if it's on a Friday, like today, I got to pay somebody, you're going to have to wait. It's going to take a bit of time. And if I need to pay somebody in another country, forget about it. So for FedNow instant payments, it's going to work out pretty well here. I'm not sure how it's going to work out globally. Me personally, I don't think this is the end all be all in the most awful thing of all time. I know one of the channels are going to talk about FedNow and how the devil incarnate is behind it. But me personally, if you want to make payments a bit faster and easier or whatever else, sure, go right ahead. Then people will say, of course, but Rob, you don't understand because they can shut down your account. Here's the truth. The federal government could shut down my account right now. They go, hey, look, that guy, Rob, the digital asset news, he's a terrorist. We need to shut down his account. And they could very well easily do it, which is just the right documentation and paperwork. Now, I don't think they're going to, I'm not a terrorist, but who knows. So the question that, of course, everybody's talking about right now is, well, first of all, is what are these instant payments for? Who can use them? And how is this going to lead us? And why is crypto digital assets doing quite well? So it comes on to this. So right now, this is from the actual website of the FedNow. And it says, this is who FedNow can use and what it does. It's for person to person, consumer to business, consumer to government, government to consumer, business to consumer, business to business, business to government, account to account, everybody can possibly think of. So if they have this coming out, well, wouldn't that go against crypto digital assets? And why the heck did crypto pump? Because FedNow is coming out, that means everything's in a crash, right? No, that's not why people got into Bitcoin, Ethereum and everything else down the line, although they're getting a lot more Bitcoin than anything else quite honestly. It's because of this, people realize that there's a flaw in the system. I don't care if it's FedNow or if it's a CBDC, we don't trust it. And it's all a confidence game. Even Jerome Powell said that on the congressional hearings, he goes, this is a confidence game. If they have no confidence, our job is over. So Bitcoin gains amid growing investors concerned over a global banking crisis. That's why people get into Bitcoin. And me personally, I think it's just going to work like this. It's going to go FedNow to CBDC. There's going to be problems. There's too much centralization of authority and people are going to figure it out. Like they're figuring it out right now, like, hey, I need to opt out of the system. And what I'm talking about is that we had no financial advice live. Guy answered this question beautifully. I asked him, hey, are we missing something on CBDCs? Is there something that's good about it? And Guy said, well, I did this great video. And I'll link that in the description. And we talked about this in retrospect and pretty in depth. And he said, listen, people want it faster, cheaper, easier, simpler, right? That could be a CBDC. The big problem, though, is concentration of power. And the first time that this happens, this is from Lucy White, February 28th, the digital pound of CBDC could protect consumers in bank runs, which I don't know why they would say that. What that means is that this, the bank runs that we just had, the reason why we had it is because people went to the bank and go, give me my money. If they have a digital pound of CBDC, the banks or the Federal Reserve, but the reserve banks can go, no, we're just going to turn off your money, you're not going to get it. And once people realize that, which they're realizing right now, it only takes one time. It's a confidence game. They're like, wow, how do I opt out of the system? Well, there is a way to opt out of the system. It's called Bitcoin and digital assets. Now, Maxis will say it's only Bitcoin, but whatever, you get my point. So for me, I think that's the Fed now could be good. It could be good for small businesses. But as time goes on, and if it does go into CBDCs, I think inevitably all roads will lead back to digital assets. Let me know what you think about that, how far off I am. And then to finish up and talk about this thing about CBDCs and Fed now, the payment system is coming in July. This has been talked about extensively. But you have to understand that what the government wants and what it's going to get are two different things. Fed now has been seen as a potential precursor to a CBDC. Though the service could also undermine one of the key strengths of a digital dollar, the ability to transfer instantly. That's what the Fed now is going to do. So besides that, what else can a CBDC do? Well, again, it can be programmed to shut things off. I think Fed now, for instance, payments, that could be a pretty good nice it. However, Fed officials have said the agency hasn't made any decisions about a future U.S. CBDC. Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't. Power is an attractive thing. However, this is interesting. And I understand now why Circle and Jeremy O'Lair are working so hard to work with the government because they don't want to lose their opportunity. Federal officials, including Fed Chair Powell, Fed governor, or former federal government, Lail Brainerd, and then CFTC commissioner said this, we have concerns about the proliferation of certain private stablecoins. You know what a private stablecoin is? It's USDC. And I couldn't understand why Jeremy O'Lair said this, but now I get it. And he says this, moving to a full reserve dollar, digital, digital dollar, whatever currency is our best hope to insulate the internet financial system from the systemic risks embedded in the fractional reserve banking system. He is right on that. But this dollar digital or digital dollar, what is that? That's a CBDC. This is right from the White House. And they said the technical possibilities for a CBDC, a United States central bank digital currency, would be a digital form of the U.S. dollar. So digital dollar, dollar digital, same type of thing. So what Jeremy O'Lair is saying is like, look, I know that the other branches of government don't want us to have a stablecoin. So we need to work with them and become that aspect. I don't know if it's going to happen. It is a free marketplace. I see that there is value in stablecoins themselves, especially for the different parts of different countries where everything is collapsing. And you can get a stablecoin because you can't get a dollar. Kind of tough. Can't use FedNow over there yet. But you can use crypto and digital assets. But it's interesting that Jeremy wants to go and just say, well, make us the only ones. And then lastly, just to finish up with this, I think some of the other problems with global payments and the government kind of harping on everything comes out of this, is that we're losing. The U.S. is losing. This is from Larry Fink, the BlackRock CEO. And even he wants crypto, digital assets to come through. And what this is from, this is from the annual chairman's letter to all the investors. And it's interesting, if you want to read it, I'll link in the description. But to the good stuff, the stuff that I really care about is here, digital assets. In many emerging markets, like India, Brazil and parts of Africa, we're witnessing a dramatic advance in digital payments, digital payments, bringing down costs and advancing financial inclusion. So digital payments, how could you do that? You could do with a CBDC or you could do with a stablecoin. Which one do you think the government wants? But again, even if they do that with the CBDCs from America or wherever else they do, it only takes one time of a vote of confidence for them to pull this stuff, like we just talked about, for people to go, wait a second. Okay, I've used a CBDC. They locked me out of my account. They stopped me from doing it. I can only buy certain things. And not to say that's going to happen. They're saying that's what potentially could happen. That is what will lead them back to the ability to store and use their own value through a hardware, paper, wallet, whatever you want to do. And this is what leads people back into crypto digital assets. It's not about payments. It's not about how easy it is. Well, actually, that was all easy is it really just does come down to opting out of the system to protect yourself. We don't need everybody to get out of it because not everybody's going to do it. But the majority or at least hopefully a vast minority hopefully will get it and they'll come into our space. Anyhow, let me know where I'm off there. That's how I see things. And then just to finish up, not only is Larry Fink concerned, Coinbase is concerned, they're setting up a non US trading platform to get out of the US because they're like, look, we're getting hammered by regulation. And this is what good companies do. They go, let's let's branch out. On top of that, I know people were concerned about different banks that have gone under. You've had Signature Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, you've had First Republic and then Credit Swiss looks like they're failing. So the question then is, especially in the United States, is like, well, who are we going to use for our crypto banks? So US crypto firms are looking to find new banking partners. They're just going to go outside the country. Stingham in Switzerland and Bank Frick in Liechtenstein said they've received an increasing number of requests to open accounts from offshore companies, including those based in the United States. I'm just going to warn everybody that you don't have to do that so quickly. Give us a little time. And this is what I said, because people were super concerned about this, about probably don't understand that all these banks are going to go out and these institutions aren't going to have a place to store their cash. And then they're just going to collapse. No, no, they're not. We just had BNY Milan, one of the oldest banks in the United States has said, we're still open for business. Fidelity just opened up everything for institutional and retail customers to trade Bitcoin. And now, even better, I think personally, is Kraken is going to launch through a US crypto bank again, free market. If you leave an opening and people see an opportunity, they'll take it. And I got a plot of Kraken for doing this. This is from Kraken's chief legal officer, Marco Santori. He states Kraken bank is very much on track to launch. We will initially be available to existing Kraken clients in the US with potential international expansion in the future. It'll be based in Wyoming. It'll offer a more seamless integration between crypto and the traditional financial system. And I was reading this and I'm like, well, that's cool. But how far along are you? Well, they state we're the first ever crypto company to be awarded a US state banking charter. It's known as a special purpose depository institution or SPD. And I think to myself, maybe this is why Jesse Powell came out and said, you know what? You don't want us to do any kind of staking? Fine. We'll give up on that. We're going to go ahead with this bank and it's going to be huge. So I think that is a net positive. And lastly, for everybody who's been staking Ethereum, good news. Ethereum developers finally set a date for the ETH withdrawals and it will be April 12th. So congratulations for everybody who's been holding on and staking. This just means that you're going to be able to unsteak and sell. Some people are very worried about this. I think this is going to collapse Ethereum. I think personally, if you are brave enough to stake your Ethereum and not know when you're going to be able to unsteak, you're probably a big believer. And that's it for today. So look, that concludes today's show. If you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up. Just consider subscribing to these things every single day. We try to make these very timely, but that's it for what we have right now. Leave a comment below. That helps us out. This is for the algorithm. Thanks so much and I'll see you guys on the next one.