Digital Asset News covers bank stablecoin plans, Robinhood memecoins, and a US-Venezuela oil deal
Solo presenter Rob from Digital Asset News covers crypto market developments including a 21-bank stablecoin initiative, Robinhood's memecoin activity, and a breaking US-Venezuela oil deal.
Summary
Rob from Digital Asset News covers three main stories. First, 21 major banks including Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo have committed to building a joint US dollar stablecoin, with a company to be established in the second half of 2026 and a stablecoin launch planned for the first half of 2027. Second, Robinhood's Layer 2 chain is seeing explosive memecoin activity, with some tokens up over 400% in 30 days, and users are able to purchase memecoins via credit card without separate KYC — a practice that prompted JP Morgan to ask Visa to investigate. Third, a breaking report indicates the US and Venezuela have signed a major oil deal giving Washington control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, which Rob suggests could pressure Iran. He also covers the SEC's proposal to modernize transfer agent rules to include blockchain technology, and closes with a Solana valuation model showing how payments plus tokenization could multiply returns significantly.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Banks, Robinhood Memecoins, and a Breaking Oil Deal
It looks like banks — 21 of them, to be exact — are really going to get into the payments game, and it really comes down to them embracing digital assets like we thought they actually would. The killer use case, we believe, is of course payments, and banks have proven us right. We're going to take a look at that. We're going to take a look at what's going on with Robinhood and their altcoins — more specifically their memecoins. I'm not a big believer in memecoins, but you have to consider: if this is the gateway to altcoins, things are going to run pretty hard. And then we'll also take a look at a big oil deal.
Bitcoin ETF Flows and the Venezuela Oil Deal
First of all, today is an interesting day because as of September 1st, which was yesterday, we closed out — and somebody knows, or is supposed to know, something. There is a negative flow with Bitcoin ETFs. Now, this isn't uncommon. This happens all the time. But it is interesting given that we had a streak of roughly five to seven, almost ten days of net positive flows, and now we go negative with BlackRock, Fidelity, and ARK. You can see it right there — there was a negative flow, or just no buying at all. So what do people know?
Well, there was an attack by the United States on Iran and vice versa. But in the good news, it looks like the United States and Venezuela just signed a massive oil deal giving Washington DC control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. I think that would put a little bit of a crunch on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, but we'll see how this all plays out. This just broke roughly about an hour ago. We'll see how it affects oil prices. Right now we're not looking at too much of a change — WTI crude is just a fraction, not even 70 basis points or so. Not too much, but we'll see how it all plays out and maybe this will actually help with the traditional markets and our markets.
Robinhood's Memecoin Ecosystem
Let's talk about Robinhood. Robinhood has their own chain — it's a nice Layer 2 solution built through Ethereum, and it's done pretty well for them. They've been able to open up tokenization of stocks, but there's also a bigger play. This is why I said on Saturday: this is why altcoins will run. Altcoins will run for two reasons. One, it's because of the speculation aspect — people love to speculate, people love to do research and say, "Okay, I'm 100% right, I know what I'm doing, I'm going to ape in." There is that. And just a little bit of utility. We can see that now. Memecoins don't have anything — but just wait.
Robinhood and FOMO users can buy memecoins with credit cards without KYC. Not a big fan of KYC and AML, but you know who else is not a fan? JP Morgan asked Visa to investigate this. You know what that means? Looks like JP Morgan is losing customers.
According to the investigation, users of Robinhood Wallet and social trading app FOMO can purchase memecoins such as WIF directly through Crossmint using Visa, Mastercard, credit cards, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay, without completing separate KYC. Why would they do that? Why would you buy memecoins when you can just go on Robinhood and pick up a nice S&P 500 or maybe a little Google stock or Tesla? Well, it's a couple of reasons.
From CoinBase, traders are earning credit card points buying memecoins on Robinhood. That's cute. But is that going to move the needle that much? No. What moves the needle is speculation. And if we break this down over at CoinGecko — you can find this yourself, there's a link in the description — CoinGecko has its top Robinhood chain memecoins by market cap. I want you to notice the greenery going on here. CASH: 421% in 30 days, 35% in 7 days. DGEN is down a little bit. Tendies up 121% in 30 days, 119% in seven. And this one's probably my favorite: Chumpcoin. Chumpcoin is up 141% in seven days. Thinking Cat up 155% in 30 days. YOLO 307% in 30 days. You get where I'm going with this? This is just memecoins 24/7, 365, coming over again.
So when people say altcoins won't run, that they're dead — they have no idea what they're talking about. People love to gamble. And because they love to gamble, they will speculate and say, "You know what's going to do really well? Frogcoin or something." And then they say, "Well, there's this utility because if you buy this, you get some credit card points, and Robinhood might even — they've hinted at other things going on in the background." So you put it all together and people will ape in like crazy.
As a quick reminder: when I say speculation and a little bit of utility, the same thing happened with Helium token over the last seven days — it's up 131%. And that's not even a memecoin. What happened was, in one of the smaller towns outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, they introduced Helium and got rid of their Wi-Fi internet providers and used Helium to make essentially a mesh network across the whole town. Now, that town only has roughly 63,000 population, but because of that, and because of speculation and a little bit of utility, that's when you get the pump.
SEC Modernizes Transfer Agent Rules for Blockchain
It's not just the positive part — the SEC. We're supposed to have this Clarity Act vote coming up. I don't think it's going to pass, but I'm wrong every so often — just ask my wife, she'll tell you. And if it doesn't pass, that's okay. Thankfully, the SEC and the CFTC are doing things to move the needle forward.
This is directly from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission: the SEC proposes to modernize rules for registered transfer agents. This is from Chairman Paul Atkins:
"This proposal would streamline and modernize the commission's rules to reflect transfer agents' current processes and operations, including the use of electronic communications and blockchain technology in connection with securities offerings and the transfer of shares."
Basically, what they're saying is this: the old guard that used to move all the different offerings as far as equities — now they're just going to put it on blockchain technology. The question is: will it be permissionless or permissioned? Will it be centralized or decentralized? That is the question, and we're going to look at that in a moment with the 21 banks.
Also stated: "As technology changes and the competitive marketplace evolves, good government requires revisiting legacy rules and regulations." And that's all we're asking for. We're not saying, "The hell with it, let's just YOLO." We're saying let's revisit all these different laws and regulations, because they are from a time far, far away and we have left them in the dust quite some time ago. There's a reason why Swift does what it does — it's an old legacy system. It tends to work, but it could be much more efficient, and that's all we're asking for.
21 Banks Race to Launch a Joint Stablecoin
To finish up the story: 21 banks. It says here they're racing to control the $1.9 trillion stablecoin shift — and it's much more than that. To avoid losing their customer base, banks are racing to capture a stablecoin market that Citibank said could reach $1.9 trillion, as digital dollars threaten traditional deposits. And it's true. It is funny how the banks were complaining about stablecoins squeezing them, and then they say, "You know what, we'll just make our own stablecoin."
Here's what we've got. Standard Chartered estimates that stablecoins could pull about $500 billion from US bank deposits by the end of 2028. Regional banks look especially exposed, given how much they depend on the spread between what they pay depositors and what they earn on loans. If you go to your bank and you've put in $10,000, and you go back tomorrow and say, "Can I get my $10,000 out?" — they don't have that. It'll take you days to get it back, because those dollars are just on a ledger, an electronic ledger. What they do is loan that out. It's called fractional reserve lending. They'll pay you back at some point — they've got it somewhere — but it's going to take a little bit of time. And what they do with your money and everybody else's depositor money is loan it out at five, six, seven percent and make yield on that. That's the whole game. And that's why they don't like stablecoins — because they need that money to maintain reserves, and they don't want stablecoins eating their lunch. So what are they going to do? Make their own lunch.
21 major financial institutions — including Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo — committed on September 1st to build one. One being essentially a stablecoin that's going to come out for the big banks. The group announced plans to establish a company in the second half of 2026, launch a US dollar-denominated stablecoin in the first half of 2027, and comply with both the GENIUS Act and the MiCA Act.
Now, you'd say, "Rob, they probably aren't going to do a permissionless, decentralized stablecoin — they'll probably make it permissioned." And you're probably right. I will just remind you of one thing: banks aren't great at innovation. They actually suck at it. The reason is they're a massive conglomerate. It's just like getting anything new done in any large business — you have to go through managers, mid-managers, upper management, and not everybody's on the same page.
If you take a look at payments and apps and different ways to do things, you'll notice there is one app — actually two, really three — that belongs to the banks. That would be Swift, which isn't labeled here. This is the top payment apps by annual transaction volume. Swift is the granddaddy, at roughly $140 to $150 trillion — correct me in the comments. The next one underneath that is what everybody else is using right now: Visa. They didn't need a bunch of banks to come in — it's their own private company. Mastercard, Apple Pay, Stripe, PayPal — all private companies. And then there's this thing called Zelle. If you're outside the United States, you may not even use this. Zelle was made by banks, for banks, for banking institutions and banking customers. And it's used, but it's at $1.2 trillion. Not too great. Then you've got Venmo, Cash App, Wise, and a little Western Union in there.
So again, for me to think the banks are going to innovate and do something awesome — maybe they can get the stablecoin moving forward. But as far as moving things around and innovating, I just don't think it's going to happen with the banks.
Valuation Model: What Happens If Crypto Takes Over Payments and Tokenization
That leads me to my last point. I don't know which chain is going to be the winner. I just don't know. And that's why I diversify the different investments that I have. But the question you have to ask is: okay, if we just do one aspect of this — let's say just a stablecoin — and we take a look at Visa channel analytics and we look at the four big chains: Binance, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron — and we say, "Okay, they're going to take over payments." If you just take over payments, where is Solana today? It's only at $99. Look at that. But if you start to move these sliders — 1% — you go to $150. That's not bad. I'll take that. But that's not life-changing money. 50%? Come on.
But what if you did tokenization? Stock tokenization, which is being done right now. Bond tokenization. Derivatives. Options — very nice. Swaps. Maybe a little bit there. Federal Reserve allocation — that's not going to happen. Speculation premium, because people like to speculate. Narrative premium — it's not just adoption, it's what additional revenue are we going to get? And then a fee burn intensity, which I think just passed. What do we have? You just 4x your investment.
And these are the things that can be done. It is never just one thing that gets adopted. With the different chains that are coming out — that could be your chain, that could be XRP, that could be Canton, that could be Ethereum, maybe someday we figure out how to put these things on Bitcoin — if we start to do global payments, tokenization, real-world asset tokenization, bond tokenization, futures, REITs, and things like that, then you start to see the big money come in and the big price appreciation. And that's what it comes down to: speculation and a little bit of utility.
Q&A
Rob: Crypto Steos says: "My two cents about the Robinhood chain — it's good for the price of ETH because you need ETH for gas. My favorite tokens on Robinhood are UNI, Virtual, Pingu, Ponds, and AI." Yeah, it's just that they don't pay much as far as gas fees go for the Layer 2, because it's not — let me bring this up. I'm looking for the Layer 2 section. There we are. Layer 2s. Arbitrum is already down 81%. So Robinhood is a Layer 2, but it's an adjunct of Arbitrum. Arbitrum had a pretty good system where they said, "If you want to come here, we'll create any kind of blockchain you want if you build on top of Arbitrum." That's what Robinhood did. Works out pretty well for them. Wow — seven days up 40%. That's pretty good for Arbitrum. We'll see — again, speculation.
Someone asks: "Can we donate tomorrow during the marathon live stream?" Absolutely. You can donate right now. There's a link in the description. Or you can just go to the website — Band Teaches Crypto, 100% free — and hover over Charity. Click on Charity, then click Donate. The options you have for crypto are plentiful: Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron, XRP, Cardano, and Tether on Ethereum, Tron, and Solana, and USDC on Ethereum and Solana. So if you have something you want to get rid of, go right ahead.
Someone says: "Robin Hood's the next FTX." No. The thing about Robinhood is it actually has oversight. The SEC takes a look at them, and they have KYC and AML. They have regulatory bodies that check up on them, unlike FTX, which was loosely done because we really didn't have any type of rails in place. It was just a brand new thing. 2021-2022 was a pretty good time and a pretty awful time at the same time. I can't say anything can't blow up in your face — and that's why I would never use one exchange and just leave all of my assets in one place. You have to move things around.
Someone asks: "I don't know why we still talk about ADA. It's a ghost." That may be true, but somehow it's still in the top 20. Let's see — Cardano. It is. I'll be damned. Cardano is number 19. It's like nobody wants to sell it. That's fine with me. I've got a stake pool if you want to make a little yield while you're holding it to Valhalla — links in the description.
Jimmy asks: "Is it 501(c)(3) deductible?" Yes, it is. It's a no-kill dog rescue here in Puerto Rico — Louisa 501(c)(3). If you want to see what your money is going to go to, I'm going to be doing updates as we build there because I'm going to help build it. First, we've got to level out the land, put in electrical components, water, utilities. It's going to take a while, but it's going to be great.
Ferrar says: "Thanks for the Helium news. I was wondering what was happening the other day." Yeah — a nice little town outside of Dallas-Fort Worth just said, "Hey, we're going to use the Helium Network." And so they did. Good for them.
Someone says: "Find tokens that are on both Robinhood and Solana — you'll find great price action." Yeah, Cardano is the third-highest donation so far. Bitcoin is almost $2,000 worth — number one. BNB is number two at $1,372. And number three, which I thought Solana would be at least, is Cardano at $884. So it's going to be curious to see which chain actually makes it for payments.
Rusty says: "I'll just spray some WD-40 on my toe and the toe is good as new." You know, I used to have a patient who would do that. It was this little lady who would use WD-40 and put it on her hands, and she'd say, "Look — my rheumatoid arthritis doesn't feel so bad." And I was like, "This is kind of toxic to your body." She said, "Yeah, I know, but it makes my hands feel good." Seemed to work for her.