hello this is Charles hoskinson broadcasting live from cold swampy terrible Washington DC I wanted to make a video to talk about what's been going on recently in the last few days in the xrp community and more broadly about the nature of things in the cryptocurrency space as many of you know I've been in the cryptocurrency space for almost 10 years and I've witnessed pretty much everything you could imagine from the fall of Mount gox actually the rise and fall of Mount Cox Silk Road the rise of Bitcoin the rise of the altcoins the creation of ethereum and many other things and now throughout my time the cryptocurrency space have also seen the rise of xrp I was there before the protocol was launched and I've been here through every major Milestone along the way I know many people in the xrp community I know the leadership of the organization was recently at the Milken Institute where I sat at the same table with Brad garlinghouse Chris sarson recently reached out to us to discuss collaboration with the proof of useful work group that he's been pushing so it came as a tremendous surprise the incredible wave of criticism I receive for a single comment which was taken out of context from an interview I was in an interview called thinking crypto at my Ranch and casually asked a question what I thought about a belief that the entirety of the Securities Exchange Commission is engaged in a financial conspiracy with Joe Lubin in the ethereum group to solely single out and go after Ripple and I said this was a grand conspiracy because it obviously is there is no evidence that the entire Securities Exchange Commission has decided to only go after xrp and no one else there are hundreds of enforcement actions they have pursued in the cryptocurrency space the current commissioner the current chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission has repeatedly gone on record saying his he believes most cryptocurrencies are securities so obviously while xrp is one of the first in line it seems that the SEC intends or at least is saying that they're perhaps going to pursue a broad broad regulatory capture of our entire industry and ethereum may have gotten a pass and that could of course be because of some belief that certain Commissioners have been somehow swept up in a large wave of corruption or could simply be that tens of millions of Americans have participated in the ethereum tens of millions of Americans have put collectively tens of billions of dollars into ethereum that there are thousands of businesses built on ethereum that ethereum truly is actually decentralized and that the probability of a regulatory enforcement event would be quite low for ethereum whereas it's higher with ripple because of facts and circumstances behind the case who knows but apparently a subset of this community has decided to get so far down the rabbit hole then many that any even assertion that perhaps there's more to the story than a conspiracy of of people in ethereum FK is now a crime so much so that a person who has spent years being somewhat positive to the xrp community from interledger to other things and has found ways to collaborate now is the enemy so much so that there are now members of this same mob calling for my background in ethereum to be investigated even though I've only been there for six months that's it PR and left prior to the Ico there is no great knowledge I have of a collusion and conspiracy because there was none that at least I witnessed and it's pretty much sad and pretty disgusting and this particularly really angers me because this is not a small group of people I have literally received now dozens of emails there are now videos made it's a front page of the xrp Reddit tweet after tweet after tweet attacking me for just saying something two words Grand conspiracy during an interview for a question I was asked if this is how you treat people that for years have been a supporter of your community I was one of the only people in the top 10 of the crypto community to go and talk about the xrp case after the Will's notice came and said it was wrong for the SEC to pursue actions that's a fact it's verifiable you can see it and yet you want to go down this road as a community it's shameful and you say I should go on and give some lawyer on YouTube the time of day to spend an hour or two on his channel to let him rant at me and connect all these dots and strings about how one commissioner did something or said something versus another commissioner and that obviously is evidence that the entirety of the U.S government is engaged in a great conspiracy against the xrp community you are the victims of regulatory capture because there is a legislative hole it's not fair it doesn't feel good and it's a terrible situation for everybody involved but this is what happens when the government over regulates the EPA does it the IRS does it the entirety of the Treasury Department does it time it again there are thousands of entrepreneurs and businesses throughout the decades that have been the victims of regulatory capture of uncaring bureaucrats who have pursued agendas fair or unfair doing what they're told pursuing what they're told win or lose they don't care this is just a case for them like any other and if yes you see wins the Ripple case they put it in the W column if they lose they put it in the L column see if they can appeal but in any event they move on to the next thing on the list just like the IRS with audits if you win the audit lose the audit they go on to the very next return on the pile now you can choose to believe that this is some Grand Cosmic struggle that somehow there's this belief that that the FCC has woken up and decided to single out Ripple so that they can prevent ripple from succeeding so it can't overthrow the world order and replace Swift that's a fantasy they simply do not care they've seen a fact pattern for whatever reason they don't like and they're pursuing it it's bad for the industry and it shouldn't have been done but that's where we're at so when on the facts and merits of the case and the facts and merits alone xrp shouldn't be a security if it's truly decentralized if it's truly run by its Community if it provides real use and utility and applications you should not require some bizarre belief that the whole agency is engaged in a conspiracy against you in order to win on facts the law should be on your side if you truly believe that and if it's not you have to start asking about how to change the law because the law is unjust or unfair that's my only commentary and for that I've been harassed repeatedly this is how you treat people this is what you want this is the end result and I'm told to apologize for the audacity of these things more broadly the cryptocurrency space there is tribalism and it's gotten so incredibly toxic and bad it is one thing to point out that significant and terrible protocol mistakes have been made like with the ethereum merge where they've robbed their entire ecosystem of liquidity and they've pursued bad design decisions it's another thing entirely to descend into this madness I think the bear Market is making people a bit crazy and I call once again for people to take a step back and realize what they're doing you're not making crypto stronger you're not making any of the fundamentals of any of these projects stronger all you're doing by succumbing to this madness is hurting us all slowing down adoption and preventing projects from being able to work with each other this entire Affair transformed me from somebody who is excited to collaborate with the xrp community on standards to join this proof of useful work movement and to work with this community amongst many others to now having no desire to do anything with it for fear that if I say two words Grand conspiracy would ask the question in an interview a casual question that I'm going to be faced with a Twitter flash mob why would anybody in their right mind walk into that room walk into that Community especially after having a long track record of being one of the few people to support it it's nuts it's absolutely nuts and if you can't understand why that's a problem then you're the problem this industry is going to live or die based upon its professionalism and its conduct we can criticize each other we can from time to time make a joke here and there we can have professional disagreements uh we can even call each other nuts but at the end of the day we should at least treat each other with some modicum of dignity and there is none here it's absolutely bereft of it and this is just an example of how crazy things have gotten absolutely crazy you see it's hard that every tweet every video results in a story on coin Telegraph or some other medium things get blown out of proportion things get taken out of context that's just where we're at and I think it's a broader symptom of the whole social media flash mobbing but again we have a small window of time to do things the right way and if we don't regulation will come and end our industry as it is only thing that's going to prevent that is if we work together we set this pettiness and stupidity aside or by default we will lose by default the very people we're trying to usurp the Legacy Financial interests that resulted in the creation of this industry will win and they'll put us all In Chains and for the rest of time we'll just remember when we had a time where we could have made a difference but we chose not to because we let our pettiness and divisiveness and our egos get in the way this is a perfect example of it should not have happened the leaders in your community should have stood up and said something about it it was wrong absolutely wrong but they didn't they stayed silent they tried to take advantage of it for ratings and viewership Stoke fires you happy now is that what you wanted great and you know what you can just criticize the hell out of me for making this video you can say I'm crying and oh wow at the end of the day what have you accomplished someone you could have collaborated with an ecosystem you could work with don't really want to anymore okay go It Alone then great all the power to you that's all you need right yourself and if People's misspeak they're immediately exiled you've just broadcasted to the broader cryptocurrency Community the consequences of a single word a single sentence again just an interview asked a question you took my comments out of context you ignored years of commentary and now we're here that's what you wanted okay great you just want to watch the unraveling of the entire cryptocurrency Community why am I here in Washington DC to speak with lawmakers to speak with regulators from the cftc to others to talk about how do we build a framework which is fair for the American cryptocurrency industry that actually doesn't attack companies to make things like what happened to Ripple not happen to everybody else that's why I'm here that's where I'm spending my time I could be on my Ranch instead I choose to be here these are not fun meetings these are not the most enjoyable things in the world they're deeply technical they're frustrating at times compromises have to be made and we as an industry need to do this but instead you've chosen to invest time in this madness it's a shame so oh yeah I'm frustrated I'm deeply frustrated about this and it has to stop and it will stop either because we're going to win and the regulation will get where it needs to go or we're going to lose in which case we no longer have the right as an industry to pursue these things in the United States now the industry as a whole will just go offshore but all of you in the United States will suffer as a result of that and we'll watch a multi-trillion dollar industry leave good luck for the dollar then good luck for a national debt debt okay as an American entrepreneur I don't want to see that industry leave the United States which is why I'm fighting so hard and dealing so hard but this is just a sad day and um it is what it is
