Institutional Money in Crypto: What Coins Are Big Banks Really Buying?

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3:22So this presentation is called Institutional Money and Crypto. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, feel free to screenshot these documents because if you screenshot any document you find on social media, on any website or anything, you can screenshot it, copy and paste, put it into Google when the document comes up. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can easily find all the documents that I'm going to share today. Some of the documents that we have are from SWIFT, are from the World Economic Forum, Citibank, State Street, just to name a few, and they cover a plethora of different topics.

3:55If you're listening with your headphones or on your way to work, feel free to go back and re-watch this because I think that everyone needs to have these documents that we have. As we mentioned earlier, I have roughly 12 ,000 documents, give or take, and having to concise it down and break it down to 13 documents was very very difficult but I think that these 13 documents embody where we are right now in history so let's get started this document goes to say that all coins have largely floundered under four-factor drag token creation exploded from roughly 12 ,000 tokens in 2017 to 1 million in 2021 and now almost 40 million today with liquidity comparable to past cycles capital stretch is razor thin this creates an environment where capital rotation occurs at a breakneck pace, spawning a penny stock boom that undermines long-term investor engagement and sustainable wealth creation.

4:46So what does this mean? And back in 2017 and even 2021, you were able to throw money at any random token and potentially make life-changing wealth. And if that's any of you guys today, congratulations, I'm proud of you. But the environment was now entering, there's too many tokens to make all votes rise. And the way that institutions work, because as we know this week, as of recording, it's crypto week, and I'm fully expecting the legislation to get passed, and we'll talk about that shortly. But with institutions coming to the space, institutions don't adopt stuff for fun. They adopt things because it's more efficient, it's faster, and it's cheaper.

5:20So they're only going to put capital into the tokens that they believe will increase in wealth. And then it comes down to a point, how do we know what tokens to invest in, like institutions? How do we know what allocations institutions are putting into the crypto space while they actively tell us and they actively document it real quick so for the person that's just listening to average listener they hit tokens there's the word coins just quickly just give them the difference between coins and tokens so essentially the easiest way to break it down is that um it's the same thing imagine xrp or bitcoin imagine that just being the same thing as the apple stock except now we can build on top of those platforms and create an entire ecosystem.

6:02And then how each ecosystem works is I don't think we can even imagine it. The way I like to compare it to is when the internet first came out or when the iPhone first came out, we have our use cases that we think are going to be used, but institutions actively document how the use cases they can't even imagine. And it's going to be a frivolous thing for years to come. So pretty much what you're saying is that, okay, invest in the coins that institutions are investing in. And if institutions are not investing in it, stay clear of it. Exactly. I think the safest bet, as we know, is Bitcoin. Mr.

6:37Granddaddy of them all. It encompasses roughly around 60 % of the total market cap from crypto. But it goes deeper than Bitcoin because businesses have different pain points and businesses have different use cases. Same with governments. And the world will never agree on one blockchain. We can't even agree on peace. So how could we ever agree on one single blockchain to use? And that's where it becomes difficult. If there's 40 million tokens in the crypto ecosystem and more today, that document came out of December of last year, I'm pretty sure. If there's more today than 40 million, how do we know what to invest in?

7:12So I personally focus on institutional documentation because if an institution over a billion dollars in assets under management is investing in something and believes in it, And like you guys say, with Mike Novogratz, if a billionaire actively comes on and says that some institutions are investing in Solana, we have to believe them. Which institutions should we be paying attention to in terms of who's investing into the space? All of them. But the way that I like to break it down is I focus a lot of my research on the Bank of International Settlements. For those of you guys who don't know who that is, that's the Bank of Central Banks.

7:46I focus my research on the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government, Swift essentially handles messaging and transactions for 11 ,000 banks globally. The World Bank, the IMF, the European Central Bank. Because if you look and you do some research, you can easily see what institutions and what governments move the most amount of capital. And that's the United States and that's Europe. So then we can narrow it down to the institutions that are located within the United States and Europe. And then breaking it down that way, you'll find documents from State Street, you'll find documents from BlackRock, you'll find documents from Vanguard and plethora going down the list.

8:28Gotcha. So this particular document right here is from EY and Coinbase. So before I talk about this survey, this survey interviewed or surveyed 352 institutional investors. And why did I focus on this survey? Because this goes deeper than just finding a document. It goes deeper than just finding a survey. Who did they actually interview and who actually answered these questions? Every single person that answered this survey has over$1 billion in assets under management, and they only surveyed decision makers, COOs, CEOs, and heads of departments. this range from people who work in family offices asset managers hedge funds private banks and vcs and they go on to tell us that 73 percent of surveyed investors hold cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin ethereum but most only hold one to two others xrp and solana and they go on to tell us what percent of institutions hold each token down the list 97 institutions hold bitcoin 86 percent of institutions that were surveyed hold ethereum 73 percent of people surveyed only hold bitcoin or ethereum 34 hold xrp and 30 hold solana and as you can see there are some others so feel free to screenshot this now this is a good guide another way i like the guide on how i make my investments on not only this but also what etf filings are out what tokens are being filed for for ETFs because once the ETF comes out, it's already too late.

9:56But if we know which applications are out and the processes that go behind it, it makes our life 10 times easier. And we can be invested like an institutional investor. Because for those of you guys who are in Earn Your Leisure and who have watched the crypto class that I teach, I preach all the time, we have to follow smart money, not dumb money. And they actively call us in these documents, dumb money. But just because that they call us something doesn't mean we actually have to be that. It doesn't mean we actually have to think like that or invest like that. We can invest just like them because they document everything that they do.

10:31So from that standpoint, Bitcoin, obviously the first choice, Ethereum, is XRP then Solana or Solana and XRP? I think it's a give or take just because of use cases. They do two completely different things. The best way that I'd like to differentiate between the two is xrp mainly handles settlement it's the settlement vehicle for traditional finances to traditional finance so it's just a way to send money faster between banks um me personally i've gone back and i've watched all the market mondays episodes all the earning leisure episodes and rashad you spoke about it a plethora of times on the true value and use case of xrp and you hit it right on the head but solana is for um it's basically like a decentralized app store that retail can build on top of.

11:22And Ethereum is essentially an institutional app store they can build on top of. The apps and the layer twos that will be built on top of these platforms, I think that the use cases are unknown and unforeseen and that the whole game is going to change in the next 20 years. But if we know that institutions and retails are going to be building on platforms like Solana, platforms like Ethereum, and the institutions will be sending money back and forth on top of XRP, I think it's a no-brainer investment use case. An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS-13 gang member from El Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man.

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13:40All over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only ASAP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name.

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