Is Crypto Truly Decentralised?: Let's Find Out | Capital Nexus - By Shepley Capital
Welcome to the latest edition of Capital Nexus – Shepley Capital’s crypto newsletter.
If you haven’t noticed just yet, we’ve slightly moved away from your typical ‘weekly market analysis’ Newsletter, and leant more into the ‘Industry Educational’ side of the Crypto world.
We’re doing this for two reasons:
1) We believe that providing you with the ‘why’ is far more valuable than always posting ‘what has’. For many of you who are fairly new to the crypto space, constant market volatility can quickly become a distraction from learning the behind the scenes of the crypto world. As we say to our clients: “The foundation of what we stand on is more important than what stands on the foundation”.
2) As we get closer to the launch of our Runite Tier Membership, our team will be focused on tailoring exclusive market insights & analysis for our Runite clients. That means if you’ve already pre-ordered our Runite tier for the insane lifetime access price of $799, expect to be seeing some excitement around launch coming very soon.
If you’re serious about building Crypto wealth, it’s not too late to get involved in our Runite Tier Membership – Joining the Shepley Capital community. Statistics prove the average crypto investor with $20,000 invested typically loses $816 in fees/lost profits in a year. So by jumping on board with our Runite Tier, you’re pretty much saving yourself $800+ Annually.
We think that’s pretty worth it!
Ripple Signals the Next Phase of Institutional Adoption
Ripple’s announcements from their ‘Ripple Swell’ event on Wednesday showed exactly where the global market is heading. Not speculation. Not narrative. Infrastructure, partnerships, and institutional integration.
Ripple has raised $500 million USD at a $40 billion valuation, backed by Fortress, Citadel, Pantera, Galaxy, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace. These are not retail-driven, momentum-based investors. These are strategic allocators who deploy capital into systems that will power the next stage of global finance. This is validation of the progress Ripple has made, and the direction moving forward.
Alongside the raise, Ripple announced a new collaboration with Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini, integrating RLUSD on the XRP Ledger to settle fiat credit card transactions on chain. This is significant. It will mark one of the first times a regulated United States bank settles traditional card payments using a regulated Stablecoin on a public blockchain. This is the bridge between existing financial rails and the infrastructure being built on-chain.
We also saw a full circle moment with Palisade returning to Ripple. Palisade has built scalable infrastructure that aligns directly with Ripple Custody and Payments, providing wallet-as-a-service architecture that strengthens Ripple’s enterprise-grade settlement capabilities. It serves the same function Stripe once did for the web, but for financial value transfer at the global level.
RLUSD After One Year:
💰 Over $1 billion in market cap
💸 Fully backed 1:1 with USD reserves
🏦 Positioned as a transparent and regulated Stablecoin for institutional use.
With Ripple Prime, GTreasury, and Rail now aligned in the broader ecosystem, RLUSD is set to operate alongside XRP to support global settlement that is:
✅ Faster
✅ Compliant
✅ Scalable
✅ Institution ready
This is the part of the cycle where the market shifts from theory to implementation. The speculation phase is ending. The infrastructure phase is underway.
Ripple is not trying to disrupt the global financial system from the outside. It is integrating with it at the settlement layer.
What This Means Going Forward…
Ripple now sits at the intersection of:
💳 Institutional liquidity
🚂 On-chain settlement rails
🔒 Enterprise-grade custody
📑 Regulated stablecoins
♻ Global cross-border payment infrastructure
To make things even better for both the Ripple community & XRP holders, we remind you of the past two weeks of Ripple announcements that only fuel the expansion:
The latest Acquisition of Ripple Prime (Formerly known as Hidden road); A gateway that controls multi-asset prime brokerage that clears and settles up to $3 trillion annually across FX, derivatives, fixed income, and digital assets.
EvernorthXRP launched 12 days ago as the largest public XRP treasury company.
Ripple’s pending result of the OCC review for the’ Ripple National Trust Bank Licence’. If successful, XRP steps into a new era of legitimacy:
✅ Integration with traditional banking infrastructure
✅ Cross-border payments
✅ Remittances, & settlements.. both areas where XRP thrive.
Crypto is moving into its implementation phase. Real networks. Real settlement. Real integration. Ripple’s strategy shows that the future of finance is not designed to replace existing systems, but to modernise & expand them to fit our digital society. What we are watching now is the architecture for global value transfer being rewritten in real time
Are Stablecoins really as Decentralised as we believe?
Many popular stablecoins; such as USDT, USDC, and RLUSD are issued on controlled blockchains that allow their parent companies to freeze or blacklist addresses. This essentially means if your account id is flagged during a compliance check or investigation, your Stablecoin funds can technically be restricted or locked. In a way, this mirrors what we have already seen in traditional banking for decades… When alleged wrongdoing occurs, banks freeze accounts to meet regulatory obligations.
And now, we’re seeing a similar process unfold in certain parts of the digital asset space. It’s understandable that people are questioning the true decentralised reality of this “innovation” that we call digital currency, especially if a 3rd party still has the ability to control your funds. But here’s the truth that seems to remain hidden from agenda driven headlines; ‘This only applies to very specific centralised stablecoins that make it very publicly known of this power’.
Using the already discussed RLUSD as today’s example; this Stablecoin was created specifically as a centralised, stable backbone for the Ripple transaction processing universe to function efficiently. If the name doesn’t give it away already, the Ripple company created & maintains the compliance & function of the Stablecoin. This inherently means that Ripple does in fact have an element of control over the expenditure of their Stablecoin.
So whilst we recognise the concerns that holders may have, we use this article to remind you that Stablecoins are only a snippet of the decentralised world of Cryptocurrency. Decentralised assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum don’t carry this risk. No company, government, or institution can halt your access or transactions.
The Real Game isn't on the Charts
For those of you that are continuing to feel stressed when looking at your Crypto portfolio’s over these past few months, take a moment to step back and realise what’s happening outside of the charts.
Nearly every major institution; investment funds, private equity groups, even traditional finance giants are quietly accumulating Bitcoin and top altcoins… by the Billions. Most retail investors will never truly comprehend the psychological game behind asset trading. Big players controlling market sentiment are shaking out individual investors before the next wave. Fear-based headlines, sudden price wicks, and heavy volatility are all part of that strategy.
On a different note, Exchanges are capitalising on this fear based opportunity by using their holdings to liquidate over-leveraged traders. Whilst technically (based on today’s exchange regulations) dumping hot wallet holdings isn’t seen as insider trading, a case can certainly be made that exchanges are raking in millions in user revenue through creating a volatile leverage environment. For the most part, whilst this does directly affect market price of projects, there’s no major impact for spot holders.
Nevertheless, until selling pressure from spot traders also dries up, large players hold the power. Soon enough that pressure will release, and those of you holding your portfolio for the long-term will experience the full force that comes from trillions in global capital flooding in.
Don’t forget to check out our Free Resources at Shepley Capital. Our goal is to publish 📗10,000+ Lessons, Guides & Articles to help the everyday investor succeed in their crypto journey!
See you next volume.
~ Chris Shepley
Founder of Shepley Capital
