I did get a chill.
Look at that standing ovation.
Great. Welcome. Thank you.
Good to be back in Vegas.
I was going to say welcome back to Vegas. This is our fourth iteration of the XRP Las Vegas conference. I remember the OG group at Treasure Island.
Yeah. We're much more organized now.
I'd say organized. And just look at this crowd. I mean, it's indicative I think of how far we have come.
I still think the opportunity ahead is even further, but it's been an amazing journey to watch. Obviously some of the regulatory stuff has been a very important part of the chapter of the last four years. I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit, but it's really magical to see the number of people that are here. The engagement level, seeing the XRP brand up and down the strip was pretty cool.
Because usually XRP Las Vegas happens at the same time as Bitcoin and the Bitcoin conference is in Vegas, but I think this year you really knew the XRP conference was in Vegas, maybe more so than Bitcoin.
Well, I will say our goal was not to take anything away from Bitcoin. I mean that genuinely. I guess I asked for that.
But look, as you guys have heard me say before, I believe in a multi-chain world. I do think you're seeing the bear market impact and I didn't go over to the Bitcoin conference this year. I did last year, but look, the energy from the XRP community is palpable. I will say one thing that's kind of interesting that is not widely known. This isn't a public announcement, right? We're just talking just two of us.
Who here has gone to the Sphere? Okay. I'm calling for an XRP boycott of the Sphere. And I want to tell you why. We tried to do XRP on the Sphere. We thought that'd be pretty cool. They said they would do Bitcoin and ETH and not XRP.
That's true. That's a story.
And the way I look at it, thank you to our chief marketing officer at Ripple. It actually ended up saving us money because we spent all that money up and down this trip and it worked out better.
It was not clear. Someone was making a judgment within that organization and we thought about kind of escalating but honestly when that stuff happens I'm just like, you know what, we'll take our money elsewhere.
It's not like you haven't dealt with things like that for the last several years.
We have fought a number of good fights. As some of you guys know, I sometimes refer to the XRP army as the XRP family, right? But sometimes we have to go to war and then it's the XRP army and then the army shows up.
Yes. I did want to congratulate you on 11 years as the CEO of Ripple.
Although I think half of that was spent litigating.
Fighting the fight. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's probably not what you imagined when you went into the job.
For sure. And look, at some point I think there'll be maybe books written about the whole experience but it's crazy to look back on that experience. I do think some of the behaviors emerged into this landscape during that fight. But you know, I also, I'm an optimist. I focus on some of the good stuff. I tweeted about this, the difference of Paul Atkins to Gary Gensler. It's just like wow. In less than a year they provided structured clarity around a whole bunch of stuff. And you wonder, Gary Gensler was there for four plus years. Why didn't you take the time? You just hired more lawyers to go sue people as opposed to actually let's write down how we view this. And even if I disagreed with it, at least it's clear. And in retrospect, I really do think I don't really understand why they made some of the decisions they did in that era.
It's been a journey to get here. And yeah, so I want to get into a lot of things with you and we only have limited time. So I'm gonna race through these questions.
By the way, I thought your question was for Ashish. But at Ripple, I get made fun of for stealing my team's thunder. Well, she stole a bunch of my thunder today.
Yeah. He was talking about the Clarity Act.
Well, he was worried that he wasn't going to measure up to being your opening act, but he did great.
Yeah, I thought he was great. He did outdress me. Like I went and he wore a tie. Like when he's now a public company CEO, so he can't say I can actually...
Well, I think we all remember the F the SEC shirt that you...
Oh, we can't say that word anymore. Yeah. I've never sworn on stage, so I don't know if I'm going to start now. That got a lot of attention. I don't regret that though. Some of you guys know I wore a t-shirt to a speaking engagement at a Cantor Fitzgerald conference in Miami. I wore a sport coat, but underneath the sport coat, I wore a t-shirt that did say F the SEC.
Yeah.
All right. Well, let's bring it back to the community because we are all here and it is the fourth year of XRP Las Vegas. The community is bigger than ever. How do you think about Ripple's role, Ripple's engagement with the XRP community these days? Ripple is very much involved with institutions and enterprises these days as you've come back to the US as you're growing. But how do you see your role in the XRP community?
Look, I always thought it was kind of funny and strange that people questioned Ripple's commitment to XRP. Today, Ripple is still the largest holder of XRP on the planet. We are the most interested party in seeing XRP be successful. We will continue to be the most interested party in seeing XRP be successful. And so whenever I read people kind of questioning that, I just think like it doesn't make sense logically and it's obviously not what I've said publicly. Ripple's extremely committed to how do we make XRP the most useful digital asset? How do we make it the most liquid digital asset? How do we make it the most trusted digital asset? And if we can do those things and at the same time do those things by selling products and services to financial institutions, to capital markets around what we now call Ripple Prime.
I mean, Ripple Treasury has been on a tear. And by the way, the other thing people don't know, part of the reason why we did the XRP and Ripple Treasury ads on the strip is the main competitor to Ripple Treasury is called Kriya and they were doing their customer conference last few days here in...
Oh, very nice. Yeah, we... a little trolling.
We had some wrapped buses that said Ripple Treasury picking people up from the Kriya conference.
Yeah, that's great. I think, yeah, I mean, you make a good point. I think a lot of people have, you're right, questioned Ripple's loyalty, as it were, to XRP. I think when you rolled out the stablecoin...
People were like, 'Oh, is this going to be the replacement for XRP?' And...
Look, I get it. I also, and you know, maybe this is somewhat frustrating to the XRP community sometimes, but I don't feel the need to constantly update the whole world about our strategy because to some degree that just informs people who want to compete against us. And so, look, we're gonna do things that may not at first blush make crystal clear sense. But I swear to you, even if it doesn't have a direct line from point A to point B, point B being good for XRP, it may be point A to point B to point C. It's all in service of how do we do things that expand, grow in driving liquidity, utility, and trust in XRP. And I will keep saying those things. We will keep building around that. I mean, Ripple now is 1500 people strong. We're having a record year in a ton of different ways.
You just got back from traveling to your global constituents.
