40 Burst results for "100 Million"
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep380: Now I Realize That It's An Even Bigger Problem Than I Thought
"But I do want to let you know that realistically, podcasting is taking off. Podcasting is growing. I know that because I helped many podcasters launch a brand new show just over the last few months. Most hosts never achieve the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. Hey, what's up, podcaster? It's your host, Adam Adams. And in this episode, I'm going to talk a little bit about urgency. Urgency is the thing that lights a fire underneath your ass. If you've got a fire underneath your ass, you're going to F and move. You're going to start moving. You're going to get up and you're going to do something. So there's this guy, super successful, multi, multi, multi -millionaire, several businesses. And I work with a couple of his friends who are the same. I work with a lot of people that are very highly successful. Something that I notice about these highly successful people, not all the time, sometimes they figure out what they want. They make the decision. They go do it. Like it's so easy. It's so simple. And other times they want to be frugal with their money. Even if they're a multi -millionaire, they want to be frugal with their money. They don't want to spend it all in one place. They want to make sure that they're going to get the value for what they're doing. And this guy, I'm going to call him Chris. That's actually his first name, but I'm not going to say his last name. This guy, his name is Chris and all of his friends keep pointing him to me. And he's had two different conversations with me, like almost two years ago. The other one was probably close to a year, like the end of last year. So getting really approaching. And I just dropped it because he had those conversations. He had those discovery calls. And I'm not going to force anyone. I'm not going to high pressure sale anyone. And, you know, someone like Chris, he's going to make the decision when he makes the decision. And I reached out to him yesterday and during the text messages, it was a Facebook message. I just asked him, hey, your podcast is being really successful. And it is. I want to get your story on my podcast. And he said he came back with basically almost a direct quote. I'd be delighted to come on the podcast. And by the way, I've been thinking about your services to grow my podcast. And here's the direct quote. Now I realize that it's an even bigger problem than I thought. Now I realize that it's an even bigger problem than I thought. So Chris reaches out after a year or two. We could have been giving him more listeners and giving him more social proof on his podcast, having more people that he could do business with. He's already a multimillionaire. But in two years, he lost out on a shit ton of listeners. That could have converted into actual dollars. And in his case, this might not be the case for everybody. He charges a good price when he works with people. And so in his case, he avoided, let's just call it six grand a month. We'll just agree to disagree. He avoided around six grand a month twice. And it cost him perhaps many, many hundreds of thousands, maybe even over a million dollars over the last couple of years. And he says, now I realize that it's an even bigger problem than I thought. So I want to reach out and give that urgency to you. Yes, this is self -serving because I can support you and I'll make money too. My team will make money too. I get that. You got to understand where my heart is actually coming from. It's coming from a place of you needing to have a fire under your butt. Sometimes, some of us, we just won't make that decision to start our podcast. And because we don't get in front of those people for a year or two, we end up losing out on a lot of money. We end up having more competition than we would have if we just started now. There is about five million podcasts today. There's about five million. Of course, there's way more YouTube channels. The last I checked was 60 million. I'm sure we're pushing 100 million. I would like to pull up that number and verify it. But I am sure that it's way higher than the 60 million that I checked it out on three years ago. We just crossed five million podcasts that are out there. When Chris had a conversation with me two years ago, there was only around 1 .8 million, which means his competition is way more than doubled, way more than doubled in his competition. So you wait and you lose out. Urgency, light a fire up your butt and figure out what you got to do, whether it is doing the same thing as Chris is now going to do, hire somebody to help market his podcast so that he can stop missing out on those hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, or whether it's you finally launching your podcast, or whether it's something about your business or your health or your family relationships or your spirituality. It doesn't matter. Urgency, that's what we're really talking about. Chris says, now I realize that it's an even bigger problem than I thought because he waited one year and then another year. And now he's freaking out because he knows that he's got to get this started, this marketing started or else it's going to make a negative impact on his business. We've got to get in front of those other people. It's not competition. It's not like that. I'm not trying to give you a scarcity mindset, but I do want to let you know that realistically podcasting is taking off. Podcasting is growing. I know that because I helped many podcasters launch a brand new show just over the last few months. It's how my business is staying in business, being able to support people that made that decision. And if my team is helping them do their marketing as well, they're going to grow and they're going to have a lot of listeners. I'm hoping that you get that urgency. You make the decision that you need to make to get off your butt and do something. Do something that benefits you. Think of something that you've been postponing. Think of something that you could have started a year ago. You could have started six months ago. You could have started three years ago and you just have held off. It might become a problem if you don't do it right now. Urgency. I'll see you on the next episode. This is serious. Don't go. Now that you've gotten whatever value that you feel that you've got, the actionable takeaways, you need to implement the stuff that you learn. If you remember me talking about Bird Church once and they learn how to fly and then they walk home. I don't want you to walk home. I want you to fly home. So take the steps, take the actionable steps for your benefits that you can become a better podcaster. That's the only thing that I ask of you. And I'll see you for more actionable tips on the very next episode.
Bloomberg Businessweek
Fresh update on "100 million" discussed on Bloomberg Businessweek
"On their customer base which skews towards the lower income uh end of the spectrum um they have said however that they're going to they're spend more on labor uh and and that's at least you know that's that's certainly certainly an acknowledgement that the store conditions are not where they want them uh and that they're they're they're deciding to spend money to try to improve things this year another thing that's driving that i think is just a stepped up competitive threat for years Dollar General was known as you know the big successful dollar store chain tree dollar uh its closest rival was sort of an also ran um that companies in the middle of a turnaround and so you know seems to be becoming a stronger competitor and you've then got walmart which lost some ground to the dollar stores in the wake of the great recession really doesn't want that to happen again if the economy slows down and is rolling out a lot of cheetahs whether it's you know pricing or delivery services that are designed to sort of counter uh competition on the lower end hey brendan and the stock as you said down more than 50 percent this year you know trading at a 52 -week low what does the company say about all of this they reported earnings a weeks couple ago and you know again cut their profit forecast and interestingly they had initially said that we're going to spend an extra 100 million dollars on labor this year they moved that number up to 150 million uh last month so clearly engaging with the idea that for their own customers their own workers you know there are some things that are falling short right now whether that's enough remains a big question mark but what i mean but what i mean about all these specific things i mean this is pretty gross for workers and unsafe for workers and you know we talked about the new orleans worker um who were blocking you know the fire exits and there was a fire unfortunately nobody was there but this stuff continues and i'm curious if the company addressed of any these specifics we sent them a very detailed inquiry they got back to us with with a significant and that reply uh that you know repeated things they've said in the past which has to do with them saying that they want to provide stores that are to safe work in they want to provide opportunity for their workers i think that a lot of details in the story show the ways in which they've come up short in those goals the extra investment they're making suggests that they you know they're sort of acknowledging some of the shortcomings uh but again you know like whether that turns out to be enough to really kind of turn things around i think the proof will be in the pudding that was bloomberg news u .s retail reporter brendan case and businessweek editor joe weber on this week's cover story the new issue of magazine is available on stands now online at bloomberg .com businessweek and always on the terminal you're going to want to read every line in that story because there's so much in there that you're just gonna kind of like say wait what all right everybody you're listening to bloomberg businessweek coming up story the of how the late writer tom wolf managed to create the world's most famous fictional bond trader then on one of the letters tom starts drafting a reply saying you know you your your friends were fascinating and they clued me into this this world that i knew nothing about so i put all this together and i said wait a minute this guy kurt matern is the guy who was responsible for sherman mccoy becoming a wall street trader the fire of the vanities backstory explained that's next this is bloomberg bloomberg radio on demand and in your podcast feed on the latest edition of the bloomberg daybreak u s edition podcast we looked at whether the autoworkers strike is expanding tredell i think the the sort of white held expectation is that this is a strike that will expand they've talked about you know by noon friday if they don't have substantial progress made in these negotiations that they will sort of up the ante here so i think you know what we've heard as this you know strike is is now you know a weekend is really that the sort of bid and ask here between the union and the companies remains pretty vast and and uh... not a whole lot of of budging on
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 06:00 09-19-2023 06:00
"Support for this podcast and the following message come from Coriant. Coriant provides wealth management services centered around you. They focus on exceeding expectations, simplifying lives, and establishing legacies that last for generations. Leverage their exclusive network of experts to help achieve your personal and professional financial goals. As one of the largest integrated fee -only registered investment advisors in the US, Coriant has experienced teams who can craft custom solutions designed to help you reach your financial goals, no matter how complex. Real wealth requires real solutions. Connect to a wealth advisor today at Coriant .com. 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. From the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studios, this is Bloomberg Daybreak for Tuesday, September 19th. Coming up today. The oil rally continues as talk of $100 a barrel heats up. The UAW warns of more strikes if no serious progress is made by Friday. Instacart becomes the latest IPO to begin trading. And wreckage has been discovered in the hunt for a $100 million fighter jet. The husband of a Bronx daycare facility owner in a deadly fentanyl explosion remains on the loose. Plus, former New York Mayor Giuliani is being sued by his lawyers. I'm Michael Barr. More ahead. I'm John Stashauer in sports. A win for the Mets. An update on the Saquon -Barclay injury. Mother night football wins for the Saints and Steelers. That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak. On Bloomberg 1130 New York, Bloomberg 99 .1 Washington D .C., Bloomberg 106 .1 Boston, Bloomberg 960 San Francisco, Sirius XM 119, and around the world on BloombergRadio .com and via the Bloomberg Business Act. Good morning. I'm Nathan Hager. And I'm Karen Moscow in U .S. stock index futures are on the rise this morning. S &P futures up a tenth of a percent, about six points Dow futures up.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "100 million" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
".40. Money news at 10 and 40 past the hour brought to you by PenFed. Great rates for everyone. Here's Ed Curry. This is a Bloomberg Money Minute. Movies are giving the music industry a boost. Jack Black's Peaches from the Super Mario Brothers Movie reached over 100 million streams on Spotify. A single from FastX's soundtrack, Angel Part One. Did the same. Dance the night. Dua Lipa's disco anthem that serves as the new Barbie movies big dance number. Put me under the lights. Time in front of my eyes. Reached over 200 million plays on Spotify. Next20 has seen an uptick in streams of its music since the film's debut because Ken sings their song Push. I don't know if I've ever been good enough. I'm a little bit rusty. And Aqua's 1997 Barbie girl single got a boost with a sample in the new song Barbie World. And bad I'm like the Barbie. I'm a doll but I still wanna party. From the Bloomberg Newsroom, I'm Ed Corey on WTOP. It's 442. A fire at a factory in southern Taiwan has left several people dead and more than 100 people wounded or missing. AP correspondent Karen Chamos reports. The fire began in the evening and raged overnight, bursting into explosions at times. The golf ball factory in Pingtung County soon became surrounded by firefighters struggling to find those missing. Local television showed one rescuer shining a torch at an entrance blocked by gold metal as he called out. Anyone in there? Taiwan's president Tsai Ing -wen expressed her condolences to the families of the victims. She also said she would travel to Pingtung to meet those affected by the incident. A local authority said that the cause of the fire was still under investigation. I'm Karen Chamos. Pope Francis is in southern France. CBS News correspondent Elaine Cobb reports from Paris. There were cheers and cries of long live the Pope as the pontiff passed through the streets of Marseille on his way to celebrate mass for more than 50 ,000 people. Earlier Pope Francis spoke of Europe's migration crisis at a meeting of Mediterranean region Catholics. The Mediterranean has gone from the cradle of civilization to the graveyard of dignity, he warned, referring to the thousands who have died trying to cross the water to Europe. Elaine Cobb, CBS News, Paris. Coming up after traffic and weather, US News and World Report's best college rankings are out and one area school is moving up the chart. It is 443. Daisy was abandoned by her family and placed in foster care at 15 years old. Her life was full of uncertainty. She thought she'd never have a permanent place to call home. Before
The Breakdown
A highlight from The Five Most Important Stories in Crypto This Week
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, September 16th, and that means it's time for the weekly recap. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Well, as you know, I have been doing something a little bit different for the weekly recap recently. I've been collaborating with Scott Melker, the wolf of all streets on Friday morning with a live show that we've been doing. That's basically a chance to count down what we think are the most important stories and have some more editorial analysis around them. Obviously, you guys know that when it comes to the normal breakdown show, the way that I insert editorial isn't me giving my opinion on every story that comes through. Instead, it's about how I curate the breadth of different opinions, and that's what really matters to me. I want you guys to have lots of different opinions so you can make up your own minds about everything that's going through this industry. However, people have responded to having a chance to have a little bit more of subjective that opinionated take. And so today, while Scott is in Singapore for token 2049, I decided that I would do my own countdown. This is pretty off the cuff. I'm just letting it rip. But these are what I think are the five most important stories in reverse order. Of course, we're going to do a countdown. Let's make it a countdown. At number five, we have the Gensler hearing and his subsequent comments. So what happened? Well, there was a standard oversight hearing for the SEC this week in the Senate Banking Committee. And of course, everyone in the crypto space was waiting with bated breath to see what soundbites would be trotted out against us this time. Certainly, they were there. Sherrod Brown, who's the chair of that committee, certainly used it as a chance to reinforce his view that a crypto is bad and that be the SEC's enforcement record is good. And Gary's prepared testimony also had some knocks on the crypto space as well. When it came to the hearing itself, the biggest soundbite from Gensler was when he responded to Sherrod Brown, saying right now, unfortunately, there's significant noncompliance and it's a field which is rife with fraud, abuse and misconduct. That was the headliner quotable that people ran with. And yet what was notable about crypto in this hearing was how little crypto there was in this hearing. Indeed, it was almost totally supplanted from the GOP as a topic of interest instead to be something like Exhibit A in a broader case that it seems like Republicans are going to be making for the American public heading into election season, which is about the overreach of Biden appointees and government agencies in general. There was a lot of antipathy towards Gary Gensler for his refusal to comply with Republican requests for oversight. Ranking member Tim Scott, for example, called this dereliction of Gensler's duties to the American people. And in general, it seemed like Republican members were gearing up for much bigger fights. Things like the major questions doctrine, which is a new vector for having the conversation about how much authority agencies and unelected officials can claim. Those seem like the battlegrounds that are shaping up in this pre -election season. So the reason that this hits number five at the list is not that there was something really substantive that was said. It's the fact that there wasn't. And indeed, that crypto has become part of a very different narrative, which is something that given that we are just at the beginning of presidential election season, I think we're going to see a lot more of. Now, as to the question of whether crypto not being a hot button congressional issue throughout the rest of the election cycle is a good or bad thing, I think that's a little bit in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, we had a pretty good chance to get some bad legislation on the books during the time when antagonism towards the industry was highest. But at the same time, you have a whole lot of people and a whole lot of companies and a whole lot of institutions that simply aren't going to touch the space with a 10 foot pole until we get some at least basic clarity. I think that if you are in that camp that wants that basic clarity, the best that you can hope for is some very targeted legislation such as common sense stablecoin rules or something like that. Number four on our list today, we have of course, Binance executives leaving. This was the only one that I knew had to be at this certain level. Because of course, four is CZ's favorite thing to say when anyone has anything to say about Binance this year. TLDR three executives left this week from Binance US making the total 13 across the entire conglomerate since June. News broke on Tuesday that Binance US CEO Brian Schroeder was gone. And then on Thursday, the head of legal and the chief risk officer followed suit. Now added to that we have allegations from the SEC that Binance US were not cooperating with document discovery and that their wallet provider is a Binance subsidiary offshore. In other words, effectively a direct allegation from the SEC that Binance lied earlier on in the lawsuit when they said that they would not send client funds to Binance International. Now CZ did come out and address the rumors around Brian Schroeder. He said in the tweet, there's been some speculation regarding recent management changes at Binance US. Brian Schroeder is taking a deserved break after accomplishing what he set out to do when he joined two years ago. Under his leadership, Binance US raised capital, improved its products and service offerings, solidified internal processes and gained significant market share, all of which helped to build a more resilient company for the benefit of our customers. We are grateful for his contributions. Of course, the crypto world falls into basically exactly two camps. The one who followed up that post saying thanks so much for the explanation. Of course, that's it. And the rest of us who are looking at it sort of shaking our head saying, of course, that's the only thing that you can say. So what's actually going on? Well, it seemed for a very long time like Binance had basically no future in the US. It is under absolute assault from basically every regulatory angle. And regardless of what turns up, there's already been a huge impact on market share. It doesn't have access to banks. And at this moment, we're seeing trading volume in the single digit millions for 24 hours, which effectively means it's not doing anything. We've had eight months of online science from that CEO Brian Schroeder. And so it's hard to imagine that there's any real future there. Now at the same time, it's important to remember that Binance doesn't necessarily need the US. It is still by far the biggest exchange in the world, although its market share has decreased as well. And it would be a pretty rational move at this point just to move on to greener pastures. Now that said, it does not at all feel like the regulatory story and the investigative story around Binance is done. And while I'm certainly not rooting for them to have done bad things, because God knows this industry doesn't need another SAM. I also would like whatever's going to happen to happen so we can get on through it. Speaking of SAM at number three, we have FTX selling approved. This has been a big emergent narrative, really more of a fear than a narrative. And the TLDR is that Galaxy Digital has been approved to start selling FTX's liquid crypto assets. FTX has about 3 .4 billion worth of liquid crypto to sell. And Galaxy has been authorized to sell 50 million of that this week and next week, and then 100 million per week after that. There had been some discussion before this approval around whether people could just get their crypto back instead of it being converted to US dollars. But basically, the bankruptcy estate said that that was just impossible based on how messed up things were internally at FTX. Now, why this matters is less the bankruptcy process and more about the market internalizing this deep fear that we have this big multi -billion dollar sell pressure coming right down the pipeline. Lots of people have pointed out that it's not in anyone's interest, Galaxy Digital FTX or any of us, for this group to just mass dump this and create negative price impact. But that hasn't stopped people from being scared. It feels to me like one of the next things we just have to get through and frankly might correspond with another round of negative press around SAM's trial coming up next month. But if we're asking for opinions, get through it, we will. I think the pressure will be less bad than people think it will. And I think there will be a little bit of a rebound narrative when people realize that it is less bad than they anticipated. At number two, we have the SEC but in a different context. The SEC settled their second case against an NFT project this week, that project being Stoner Cats. Now, I did a whole show about this. But basically, the important things about this are one, the SEC saying its jurisdiction extends to NFTs, two, the reasoning for the SEC's jurisdiction extending to NFTs making it seem like their jurisdiction extends to your Magic cards and your anything else as well. Three, for the fact that we are again seeing their strategy of going after smaller projects who have very little incentive to actually defend themselves and much more incentive to just settle and move on with their lives. And four, for the increasingly direct dissents from Hester Purse and Mark Ueda. Now, there are a lot of pieces of that. I don't really want to go into the whole NFT and collectibles argument again. I did that on the show a couple days ago. I will only say here that I do think that overreach in this area potentially undermines SEC authority in the long run, because I don't think it's going to hold up necessarily. I think the bigger thing to watch is once again, the culmination, the crescendo, if you will, and the coming endgame between this SEC and the industry. Now, of course, should the SEC be emboldened by another Democratic administration, things could just continue or even amplify. But it does kind of feel like we are at the period where most of the big shots have been fired, cases against Coinbase, cases against Binance, etc. And now they're back to trying to pick off easy targets that have implications that would lead to the accumulation of their own power. Perhaps once again, this is the reason that the GOP opponents of the SEC have decided to make the issue not crypto per se, but regulatory overreach in general and Gensler's desire specifically to expand his personal authority and the authority of his office in ways that undermine the authority of Congress. In other words, the reason that the Stoner Cats decision gets so high on this list is not so much the Stoner Cats decision. In fact, it's not hard to find people even in the crypto community who don't really want to go out on a limb to defend Stoner Cats. Instead, it's about what it represents in terms of the cycle and where we are in the fight versus the SEC, which leaves us with our number one, which is actually a news story that broke a week ago on Friday, which is Ripple acquiring Fortress Trust. Now, it's not really Ripple acquiring Fortress Trust. That's the number one. It's what has happened subsequent to that. Specifically, the very brief timeline of events is that last Thursday, this is Thursday, September 7th, said that there was an incident and that all client funds were safe. On Friday, however, Ripple announced an acquisition of Fortress, which coming right after that all client funds are safe announcement certainly raised some eyebrows. And indeed, by Monday, back to this week, we found out that this was actually a bailout and that $15 million was stolen from Fortress, which was made whole by Ripple. On Wednesday, Coindesk dug up the incident report from the software partner, and it appeared that the software provider and not Fortress themselves were the ones that had the breach. Although it also doesn't appear that Fortress were really abiding by the best practice security offered by that provider. On Monday, Anchorage Digital co -founder Diego Monica had discussed the issues with housing crypto custody within trust companies that may or may not have the technical expertise to do it safely. Now, it was related to the prime trust wallet incident, which, by the way, happened under the same watch of the guy who was running Fortress Trust. But it's certainly just as applicable here. Diego said it is an integration failure. It is a company that did not have the technical ability to do what they're saying that they do. So you've got multiple layers of why this story matters and why it's at the number one slot. First, you have the significance of this crypto institutional consolidation. Fortress was one of very few custodians, and so seeing them get acquired by Ripple will have Ripple effects for the rest of the industry. Second, I think that it is reflective of the larger brittleness of crypto institutions right now coming off of the chaos of the last two years. The infrastructure for big businesses and major funds and major investors to interact with this industry is very, very bad right now. Now, of course, a lot of that is due to the fallout of things like Operation Chokepoint 2 .0, where it's just getting harder and harder to be banked, for example, to get access to things like banking services and accounting services. But whatever the set of reasons, it has set back and will set back the industry. Obviously, one of the major positive trends that we have in crypto right now is the fact that major institutional players are circling around the edges, starting to wade their nose in. You've got Franklin Templeton adding their ETF application to the mix as a for example, and maybe that should be on the list as well. But it will be a significant barrier for those companies if they're not able to actually interact with these basic services like custody without having to go build it themselves. Now, the most likely outcome in my estimation is that they do, in fact, go build it themselves, that the companies who are good at all of these different parts of the traditional financial sector reapply simply that expertise to the crypto space. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if what happens and how the regulatory stuff resolves is that basically authority to do all these things is given to who the regulators perceive as the adults in the room. Another way of putting this is that in the same way that BlackRock is likely to get the first ETF, because that gives regulators the ability to say, look, we gave it to a safe party, I wouldn't be surprised if you see more and more crypto activity being managed by these storied, vaunted financial institutions that have long term relationships with the regulators themselves. At the same time, of course, there is no crisis without opportunity. And by the end of the week, Swann had announced that they have plans to spin out a Bitcoin only custody service. They announced that they are working with cold storage provider BitGo to develop the service and they are planning to structure it as a trust company. Now they are quite clear that this is a very difficult thing to do, that there is going to be a long period of getting the requisite regulatory approvals. But ultimately, I think it would be a huge boon to the ecosystem for that service to exist, especially from a service provider that Bitcoiners have built trust with. And that ultimately that combination of reflecting where the industry is, and the really low ebbs and hard points of what's happened over the last couple of years. But also the fact that there are multiple paths forward, some which we might prefer to others is why the Fortress Trust Ripple and now Swann situation makes my number one for the week. Anyways, my friends that is going to do it for the weekly recap. Let me know what you thought of this format. Come join us on the Breakers Discord. It's a great place to talk about this. I hope you are having a great fall weekend. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Stephanie Miller
Fresh update on "100 million" discussed on Stephanie Miller
"Today over at harbingerreport .com is about the Civilian Climate Corps. I mentioned this a couple days ago, kind of in passing, and wrote an op about -ed it yesterday. At the beginning of the week on Monday, Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez had put forward legislation that would create a Civilian Climate Corps modeled after Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. Now, back in the 1930s, in 1933, America was both in the depths of the Republican Great Depression and facing an environmental disaster of unparalleled proportions. It was called the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl lifted 1 .2 billion tons of soil from over 100 million acres, blowing it as far east as New York City, where it browned out skies for weeks. It was just a major disaster. The Dust Bowl killed over 7 ,000 people and left at least 2 million homeless. Sometimes it's like stories hear you from people you know make things real for you. Dennis Weaver was an old friend of mine and he's now passed passed away by the actor. In fact, he wrote about it in his autobiography, All the World's a Stage, that I wrote the foreword for. It told me the story of when the Dust Bowl hit, they were living on a little farm in Oklahoma and the Dust Bowl just wiped them out. His parents bundled him and his brother and sister into an old beat up Asian wagon and drove it from Oklahoma to Oregon. They ended up right here in Oregon, where the family and Dennis was a child at the time, either 8 or 10 years old, something like that, maybe 12, and they worked as migrant farm workers. They picked strawberries here in Oregon until Dennis got into his early 20s and headed down to Hollywood and the got a movies. job in And the rest, as they say, was history. But he told me these stories about the Dust was Bowl and how and dramatic how it it actually killed people. It had a huge effect on agriculture. Wheat production fell by 36%, corn by 48%. On one single day, excuse Black Monday, me, April 14, 1935, the skies were blackened by an estimated 3 million tons of topsoil from the Great Plains. In one day, the main Dust cause Bowl of the was unsustainable agriculture practices and deforestation all across the central parts of the United States, combined with a seven or eight year drought in the United States. And so the solution to this, Franklin Roosevelt believed, was to plant trees. One tree, because the leaves are evaporative surfaces, the moisture evaporates off tree's a leaves much more rapidly than it does from the ground. And the leaves represent such a large evaporative area that it's roughly four times the footprint of the tree itself. So the trees promote what's called water cycling. They draw water from deep under the earth up through the roots, you know, up into the trunk and ultimately into the leaves, and then that water evaporates out of the leaves and forms clouds and downwind rain. So that stops the drought, number one, and number two, the trees serve as a so they, you know, they stop the blowing of the dust. So, you know, the idea was let's plant trees. So the Civilian Conservation Corps planted more than 3 billion trees. They built trails and shelters in over 800 parks. They planted over 200 million trees in a belt from Bismarck, North Dakota to Amarillo, Texas. This was a belt of trees specifically set up to break the, you know, the eastward blowing winds. And they planted seedlings on marginalized and abandoned farmland all over the country. I mean, you could still see these forests when you when you drive. I used to see this a lot in Michigan. Louise and I used to drive up north from Lansing weekend holidays and things. And you look at the forest as you're driving by and you just see all these trees in straight rows. Those are the old CCC trees. So anyhow, when Biden was was elected when he became president on January 27th, 2021, three weeks into office or a week in office. He issued an executive order calling for a civilian climate corps that would. And this what is Ed Markey and Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez put into legislation along with forty nine colleagues. Their program would hire a million and a half people. Now, that has no chance in Congress right now because Republicans control Congress and Republicans don't give a rat's ass about the climate. In fact, you know, they want to take more money from from fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry. So they will do everything they can to stop anything, stop to climate change. So it's going to have to wait. But Biden out rolled yesterday. it He just he just did it. Now, he couldn't do the million and a half people that the legislation envisions. He just doesn't have that kind of money in an executive budget that he can executive order. But he is the program he is putting together, which will operate under kind kind of as a division of AmeriCorps, will hire 20 ,000 people. And there are and, you know, if you know a young person who would like to to join, they actually get a paycheck. It's over at White House dot gov slash climate core C .O .R .P .S. climate C .O .R .P .S. And of course, all the information is over at Hartman Report dot com. The title of today's piece, America Gets a Civilian Climate Corps. So, you know, that's what's going on, broadly speaking. Donald Trump has ordered Republicans to shut down the government. And let me tell you how that's going to affect you. And of course, we'll be picking up your phone calls. It's 16 minutes past the hour here on the Tom Hartman program. It's your media support group for We the This is the Tom Hartman program. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia
The Breakdown
A highlight from How Impactful Will FTX Estate Selling Be on Crypto Markets?
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, September 15th, and today we are talking about how much pressure FTX selling will put on the crypto markets. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, happy Friday. We have lots to catch up on today, starting with what has emerged as a key narrative. That is, of course, that FTX has been granted approval to begin selling their crypto assets. On Wednesday, the bankruptcy judge ratified the sale plan, which was filed in late August. Galaxy Digital has been appointed as the selling agent. At last count, FTX said it had $3 .4 billion worth of liquid crypto assets to sell. Galaxy has been authorized to sell $50 million worth of crypto this week and next week, then $100 million per week after that. Creditors can agree to increase this amount to $200 million per week on a temporary basis before seeking court approval. Galaxy has also been given permission to hedge their sales using Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives without sizing limits and at their sole discretion. Staking of assets will also be allowed if Galaxy deems it necessary. During the hearing, the judge questioned the need to sell crypto rather than distribute it directly to customers. FTX lawyers explained that there was no meaningful segregation of customer assets and balances held didn't line up with customer accounts. They said, quote, it's all part of one pool. There are assets that are associated with the exchange we call the dot com customer pool and the US pool, but they don't necessarily match customer entitlements. So when we dispose of this, we'll be turning it into cash effectively and the cash will be available for distribution pursuant to the plan. Now, all parties appeared concerned with getting this liquidation moving quickly while also limiting the price impact on the portfolio. A lawyer representing the ad hoc creditors committee said, the sooner we can get this process rolling, the better. Now, the speculation all over Twitter has of course been that this would lead to incredible downward price pressure across the crypto markets with any asset that was being sold. However, Jeff Dorman, CIO of ARCA pushed back on notions that this liquidation will be an uncontrolled dump. Here's a summary of his Twitter thread. He pointed out that Galaxy Asset Management, not their trading desk won the bid. They must act as a fiduciary and sell gradually and opportunistically. He pointed out that Galaxy is receiving massive amounts of reverse inquiry already, some from real funds and some fishing expeditions, but over the counter sales will dominate the buying. In other words, we're less likely to see a lot of selling on exchanges or via TWOPS. As good bids come in, they will engage. Hedging, he points out, will be opportunistic, i .e. long puts to offset a large drop in the portfolio. And he points out that people thinking that Galaxy will rush to sell $3 billion in futures right away is crazy. The goal, he points out, is to outperform a static portfolio, not turn the estate into a long short fund. He reminds that Galaxy cannot front run the sales and profit internally, that that is very illegal and that their asset management business is completely walled off from their prop desk. Finally, he points out that this is not some half -baked plan. It involved months of working with the courts to win this business, and that the point of bankruptcies is to maximize the upside of the estate, not speed of distributions. In other words, this may be capped short -term gains due to opportunistic sales and to strength, but it is not a fire sale into weakness. Now getting even more granular, much of the speculation in recent weeks has specifically surrounded how sales of the hefty FTX Solana portfolio will impact that market. In their most recent accounting, FTX said they hold $1 .1 billion worth of Solana, which is able to be sold. That would be around 14 % of the current market cap. It was previously believed that much of this supply was staked and would be unlocked between 2025 and 2028, although the latest FTX filing threw this into question by lumping all of the Solana holdings in together. FundStrap published a report earlier this week detailing the FTX crypto holdings and claimed that less than $150 million worth of Solana is liquid and able to be sold off. Now, ultimately, no matter what people say, it's going to be very, very hard to get people away from the concern that this amount of selling will impact the market. Liquidity is incredibly thin right now, and probably the best that we can hope is that some of the negative price action over the last few weeks has been in anticipation of this and trying to front run it. But ultimately, the only way out is through, and so we just have to deal with this as the next thing we have to deal with. Now moving over to that other big exchange, two more Binance US executives have joined the exodus from that embattled company. The head of legal, Krishna Juvadi, and the chief risk officer, Sidney Majalia, are leaving the company according to WSJ sources. Juvadi was one of the firm's main contacts for communicating with the SEC, which is currently in active litigation with Binance. This makes three executives reported to be jumping ship from Binance US in less than a week. Remember on Tuesday, sources said that Binance US CEO Brian Schroeder had left his position. Now, Schroeder has not been active on social media since February, leading some to speculate on whether reporting was simply catching up on events that had quietly transpired much earlier. According to a company spokesperson, chief legal officer Norman Reed has stepped in as interim CEO. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Safart said the obvious thing when he tweeted, well, this cannot be a good sign for whatever is going on at Binance. On the flip side, crypto has at this point, I think, written off Binance US as a going concern. The Flow Horse writes, why does anyone care about Binance US employees leaving? They don't have a job to do. The exchange is a placeholder and no one uses it. Proof of Talent founder Rob Hayon writes, Binance US doing $9 million in 24 hour volume right now. At what point do they shutter the doors? Gotta be soon, right? Now, staying on the Binance train for a moment more, the SEC have accused Binance US of refusing to cooperate during the discovery process of their ongoing lawsuit. A court filing made on Thursday noted that only 220 documents had been produced by the exchange. Binance US had signed a consent order regarding the scope of discovery in June, but the SEC are claiming that many of the documents produced in accordance with that order, quote, consist of unintelligible screenshots and documents without dates or signatures. The SEC noted that Binance had refused to produce essential witnesses for depositions, including former CEO Brian Schroeder. Instead, they unilaterally limited the list of witnesses to just four employees. The SEC said that Binance US quote, has responded to requests for relevant communication with blanket objections and has refused to produce documents kept in the ordinary course of its business, claiming those documents do not exist only for the SEC to later receive such documents from other sources. Now the bulk of the SEC's filing related to SEFU, the wallet custody system at Binance US, which is provided by Binance International. The regulator called attention to contradictory statements about Binance's involvement in the management of US customer funds. They argued that the usage of SEFU violates the terms of a prior agreement that Binance US customer funds would not be diverted offshore. The heavily redacted filing also included information obtained by the SEC with the cooperation of a former Binance US auditor who has provided over 6 ,500 documents related to Binance's accounting. The SEC are treating the lack of disclosure of these documents from Binance US directly as evidence of a lack of transparency. Now continuing on the cleanup theme, three Eros Capital co -founders, Kyle Davies and Suzu have been slapped with a nine year ban from the regulated financial services industry in Singapore. The pair have been prohibited from taking part in the management of or being a major investor in any regulated firm involved in capital markets. Now MAS, the Monetary Authority of Singapore handed down the ban after concluding its investigation into the collapse of the once high flying Singapore based crypto fund. They found that 3AC had failed to notify the regulator of the appointment of a new fund manager, falsely claimed that this manager wasn't conducting regulated activities and failed to have in place appropriate risk management. MAS assistant managing director of policy payments and financial crime said in a statement, senior management of fund managers are required to implement robust risk management measures to protect the interests of investors. MAS takes a serious view of Mr. Zou and Mr. Davies flagrant disregard of MAS's regulatory requirements and dereliction of their directors duties. MAS will take action to weed out senior managers who commit such misconduct. Now, alongside spending much of the last year ignoring requests to engage with the 3AC bankruptcy process, Zou and Kyle launched a new offshore exchange based in the Seychelles. However, that crypto and bankruptcy claims marketplace was recently reprimanded by Dubai authorities for advertising within the emirate. They were issued a $2 .8 million fine, which big surprise remains unpaid. Moving on to yet another hanging chat on Wednesday, Digital Currency Group formally proposed their Creditor Agreement as part of the Genesis bankruptcy. The agreement seeks to refinance a $630 million intercompany loan owed by DCG, which fell due in May and remains unpaid. According to DCG, the plan could offer, quote, all unsecured creditors a 70 to 90 % recovery with a meaningful portion of the recovery in digital currencies. DCG claimed the repayment of loans over time using crypto would allow creditors to, quote, capture the appreciation of cryptocurrency up to $85 ,000 for Bitcoin and $8 ,500 for ETH. We'll come back to that in just a moment. DCG called the deal a, quote, remarkable outcome for any liquidating Chapter 11 case, let alone one in the volatile cryptocurrency industry. Now, the deal will, of course, require the agreement of creditors before moving forward. DCG have secured the consent of the unsecured creditors group. However, the major creditor, Gemini, have so far been silent on the deal. Gemini claims to be owed approximately $1 .1 billion in the bankruptcy on behalf of hundreds of thousands of their customers. The Gemini claim is in a much stronger position than unsecured creditors, as Genesis posted about 31 million GBTC shares as collateral when taking loans from Gemini customers. This collateral has appreciated significantly since the bankruptcy and represents about 60 % of the total balance owed to Gemini. DCG indeed claimed that Gemini customers could see an excess recovery of up to 110 % under the new agreement. They wrote in their filing, at current pricing, the Gemini user collateral is worth approximately 607 million. If Gemini agrees to provide 100 million to Gemini earned users under the proposed agreement as it previously did, or to distribute even a small portion of the Gemini user collateral to Gemini earned users, there would be little doubt Gemini earned users would receive a full recovery. DCG then contended that Gemini is failing to, quote, put its money where its mouth is. The filing stated that Gemini, quote, is not contributing a single penny to provide Gemini earned users a better recovery. Now, the crypto community was not as convinced as DCG made it out that this was a great deal. Lumina Wealth CEO Rama Lawalia writes, The deal between DCG and Genesis reeks of self -dealing at worst and incompetence at best. The deal presumes an $85 ,000 for Bitcoin and $8 ,500 for ETH. The defaulted party should make the creditors whole, not speculate yet again on a risky gamble on behalf of creditors. Creditors lent money expecting credit risk, not volatile equity -like risk. If DCG truly believes those numbers, they should ensure that outcome for creditors through an options contract. Genesis creditors should seek the removal of the Genesis CEO, who was conflicted in a party to the alleged fraudulent balance sheet statements, petition the judge to have a new trustee, pressure Genesis to focus on the turnover motion and resume litigation. What a mess. Now, speaking of Genesis, Genesis will also cease all trading services according to a company spokesperson. If you're surprised to hear that Genesis's trading services were continuing, you're not alone. Although the crypto lending arm of the firm declared bankruptcy in January, many other DCG subsidiaries which shared the Genesis branding continued to operate throughout this year. Earlier this month, the Genesis company which handles US -based over -the -counter trading announced it would be shutting down throughout September. At the time, it was believed that Genesis would continue providing offshore OTC trading from their British Virgin Island companies, but with this announcement, Genesis has signaled their exit from OTC and derivatives trading globally. A spokesperson for the firm said, this decision was made voluntarily and for business reasons. With this termination of services, Genesis no longer offers trading services through any of its business entities. Now, while this was highly expected, it still marks something of a big moment. Wayne Vaughn tweeted, the former largest OTC crypto trading desk is officially closed. Genesis announced today that they are no longer offering trading services through any of its business entities. Seems like a juggernaut falls with every cycle. In this cycle though, friends, I think we can agree that numerous juggernauts have fallen, but perhaps it is just to clear out the way for companies who will use that juggernaut status a little more responsibly. Anyways, friends, that is going to do it for today's episode. I appreciate you guys listening as always. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
Masters in Business
Fresh update on "100 million" discussed on Masters in Business
"You were at Pequot Capital focusing on distressed debt. Tell us a little bit about your experiences there. Pequot has a legendary history and track record. about that. What are some of the different types of investing or advisory work I could do and I really triangulated on distressed debt being the most interesting part of the of the markets where I could participate in Pequot Capital had a group based in Los Angeles that had a long and experienced team that was investing in distressed debt and really kept and separate apart from what the rest of the hedge fund at Pequot was doing. But I did meet Art Samberg. Really, I would say a great person to work for. But I really learned a lot from the team doing the distressed debt investing. Rob Webster and Paul Mellinger in Los Angeles that really did a lot in the small and medium sized distressed for control space. Yes, Samberg is a fascinating guy. I had him on the show in 2015. investing and the thing that was so astonishing 17 .8 % annual You'll returns net of fees. And that's from 1987 to the mid Just an incredible run and he started, I think his first year drawdown was 25 -26 6 % right into the 87 crash. Just an amazing track record. What was it like working with Art Samberg and some of the other really storied people who worked there. Yeah, he He had a very strong team around him on the equity side. They were based in Connecticut and and doing you know, I would say investing that was separate and apart from the distressed side. We were really focused on the distress side and small and medium sized businesses buying their debt looking to restructure them taking over control, making some, you know, Swift decisions around acquisitions always kind always kind of the negative group within within a an organization that was quite equity equity focused and always looking for the upside opportunity. So it's kind of an interesting dichotomy to be a distressed investor in the context of an equity manager that that was always looking for you know, looking for the glass half full rather than the glass half empty. Well, well, you know dead investors. They just want their their money back. It's a very different philosophy. So so now let's talk a little bit about oak tree. Your timing was or to it is you join in 2007 tell us a little bit about that era. What was it like between the time when housing had already rolled over but before stocks peaked in and I remember when I bought my first house in 2006. They all I was I asked was was if I intended to repay the debt and I didn't have to show any materials about my my income or my credit cap capacity. It was If I intended to repay which you know if I knew how to short it back then I would have immediately because I'm I'm pretty sure I was not a good credit at that point in time, but but fast forward to June of seven you know oak tree in the distressed debt landscape is is really you know, second to none and when Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh saw these you know, I think they were they were early to see it in the corporate credit markets. They Decided to go raise a big fund and they had a lot of conviction to do that and stepped up with with the clients to raise it and I was fortunate to find a seat in that group and invested you know very steadily in 2007 not not terribly fully busy in 2007 to be honest but in 2008, 2009, 2010 it was by the busiest time in my career in investing. I'm sure Howard mentioned this to you but you know after the collapse of Lehman 2015 many for months you know we were buying hundreds of millions of dollars of publicly traded debt globally and frankly it took a lot of conviction to do so because everything we bought was down down five points a week later, and so there were there were more than a couple nights where I slept under my desk wondering if I had a job In in the morning the and when you say you were buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of publicly traded debt. That's every a Yeah, every day every week. 100 million dollar purchase daily you're going out because I recall Howard telling telling the story that they wanted to launch this fund in the beginning of 07 and the target Get to raise assets was they wanted three billion. They ended up with fourteen billion Sometimes size gets in the way of performance not in this case. It sounds like the timing was perfect. The sector was perfect. What what was it like having to deal with all that When when you're watching the world fall apart, you know, it was interesting because with the way we structured that particular fund. it was a smaller A fund and then we had a very very large B fund that was not it wasn't necessarily the case that it would be drawn it was it will be drawn if the opportunity presents itself so the A fund if I recall correctly was about three and a half billion the B fund was over ten billion and so when I started we were investing the a fund you know the cracks were there but they weren't wide And then very soon after you know Bear Stearns fails Lehman Brothers fails The cracks were massive and there was so much for selling from the trading dusts at the banks there was so house so that I could take advantage of it. obviously the hedge funds had redemptions it often felt like we were one of very few or maybe the the only one buying in the market which took a lot of fortitude and I remember Howard especially we said, you know, because everyone was scared
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Why Tucker Carlson is a Bitcoiner | EP 825
"Yeah, welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live, we're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin and religion of carbon making news called Traumatic Warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state before anyone makes fun of me in the chat. My mother -in -law got me these like blue light blocker glasses and I put them on last night and I felt like immediate relief and there's like different shades for it. So like these are like nighttime when the TV is there and then these are like right before you're gonna go to sleep but apparently these are for daytime. Anyways, they're badass, your eyes literally feel like they're relaxing and Opti of course is already trolling me and as well, I'm sure the chat is as well. So that's why I'm wearing these, maybe I'll continue wearing, they feel good, I'm on my computer all day, you know what, I don't care at this point. Anyways guys, today's gonna be a great, great show, orange tinted glasses, I didn't think about that. Today's gonna be a great show, we're gonna talk about the man, the myth, the legend, Tucker Carlson himself. His show last night that he released on Twitter, which I highly, highly recommend, actually has last time I checked, 320 million views, it beat the interview that he did with Donald Trump by like 100 million views. And once again, you have a politician, right, so Justin Trudeau is basically gaslighting saying like, you know, we have to put price controls on the grocery stores for raising the prices and all that stuff. But you have a politician who is literally identifying the problem, he's literally saying the government is the problem, the money printing is the problem, the government is the sole cause of these things. You have an Austrian economist who has a really good opportunity, really good shot at winning the presidency. And why I believe this video was so popular was the same reason as to why I believe that video Richmond, North of Richmond, went viral the way it did. People are feeling the pain, people are questioning the current system, and people are desperately seeking an alternative, which is why I believe this this hardcore libertarian Austrian economist has a really good shot at winning the presidency in Argentina, and the country is currently dealing with 100 % inflation, like, like, obviously, people are questioning it. And when you have a politician who's actually identifying the real cause of inflation, like people put two and two together, right? Javier Meli wouldn't be popular if he didn't strike a nerve. Richmond North of Richmond wouldn't have gone viral, right? Without any of the marketing and any of the push by the big studios, it was just basically a very small studio, it's a guy in his backyard with his dog, literally singing into a microphone. That would not have gone viral if it did not resonate with people, if people weren't feeling the pain that he was feeling, right? So this is, we are living through, in my opinion, the separation of money and state. All these roads, like even if Oliver Anthony, and even if, you know, Javier Meli, you know, and we know he likes Bitcoin, but you know, he wants to dollarize the country, all roads eventually lead to Bitcoin. Some people take the longer road, some people take the shorter road, but eventually it all leads to the inevitable conclusion that we have to separate money from state, because as long as the state has the privilege of being able to create money for free that everyone else has to work for, they will abuse that privilege to benefit themselves and benefit their friends at the expense of everyone else. And this is exactly what Bitcoin fixes. So this is really, really exciting times. Tucker, I don't think he would be at this point if it wasn't with the conversations that he had with Naeem Bukhale. Tucker would not be at this point if it wasn't, if he didn't have the conversations with Michael Saylor. Tucker would not be at this point if he didn't have the conversations with Max Keiser. And even though he was the most popular broadcaster on the legacy corporate media, his words were so dangerous that they had to fire the guy. And that makes sense. Look at all the other articles that are that's coming out of the legacy corporate media attacking Naeem Bukhale, attacking Javier Milli. Because I think they're exposing the fraud that is fiat money and the fraud that is the current established system anyways, it's going to be a great show before we get to it. I want to bring up my legendary co -hosts. We're both wearing glasses now, Opti. Opti was making, I was telling you hard, it's so much fun of me in the beginning, but I'm going to buy you a pair. You're going to be you're never going to take off anymore because I need the colorblind one. Your eyes are literally going to relax, bro. Like your eyes are literally like look at my eyes are like relaxing right now. They're like they're like, oh, like I don't even know what that means that your eyes feel relief. Like you don't even know what that means, bro. I have no idea. I've never looked as cool as you do right now with those glasses on. So I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. But anything anyways to the opening monologue, which was great, very, very eloquent. And you had that politician rhetoric going right there. I really liked it. I really enjoyed it. One of the things that's pretty crazy is the fact that Tucker got so many views on this. What what I don't know what it is now, but last time I checked, it was like three twenty two, three hundred twenty two million. Like that's damn near the whole U .S. population. And we all know that Fox wasn't getting to every single person in the U .S. Obviously, it's global. But that reach that Tucker has on Twitter or X is just it's absolutely crazy. And this goes back to what we keep saying all the time of breaking the echo chamber and planting these ideas. And of course, Tucker doesn't have to go full Bitcoin maxi like we do on our show. But the fact he's having these conversations, I think does feel like a shift in the zeitgeist and people are waking up. And we've been kind of covering pinpoints and receipts about this constantly, whether it's the song, whether it's a post that I did yesterday in the culture, whether it's the tick tock videos, like people are feeling the pain and they're asking the questions. And so, you know, the soil is right for people to understand Bitcoin and for everyone to get on the Bitcoin standard. So it's just, wow, three hundred and thirty five million views now. OK, the Overton window is crazy, man, is shifting, man. People are sick and tired. People are sick and tired of the gaslighting. You had Opti's ex -girlfriend literally telling people that the cause of inflation is because workers are asking for more salary. Like it's absurd. Anyways, we do have a very special guest today. We have James from Stamp Seed and we're going to talk about the stamp seed before. Look, I got to show off my stamp seed hammer. Look at this thing. Nice. There you go. We got we got to we got to stamp seed hammers. So I'm very excited for the culture. We're going to talk about the stamp seed, why you should back up your Bitcoin wallet seed words on titanium, one of the strongest metals on planet Earth. Is that is that correct, James? That's correct. One hundred percent. Yeah, man. So we're going to we're going to we're going to. We're going to dive deep into all that. And I know a lot of you guys I know that you did you guys did a lot of the stress testing. I think it was Lop that did some of the stress testing comments. Migo, you remind me of Bono from YouTube. It's true, but I don't think Bono was wearing these. I think Bono was wearing these for stylistic reasons. I'm wearing these so that my eyes could relax from the from the evil blue light that's coming out of my screen anyways. So, yeah, you guys did a lot of stress testing on the stamp seed. That's correct, right? Yeah. We haven't had Lop stress tested yet. I think that's in the works right now. But we tested ourselves in house, various different sources of heat. One of them was a blowtorch, which is similar to Elon Musk, not a flamethrower, which is reaching temperatures triple the average house fire. This is one of the plates that we had stress tested. You can see it's been burnt to a crisp. That's why there's all that discoloration. We marred it up. So where you can see those hammer marks are hit. You can still see your letters. It might not come out too clear in the camera. Bent it, crushed it, you know, being that it's one solid piece and your letters are stamped deep into the metal when you bend it. Things aren't going to. There you go. Look at that. Look at that. Yeah. Things aren't going to fall apart. You know, there's no loose pieces, no loose tiles, you know, Scrabble pieces, I like to call them. Everything's in there. Yeah. Like this is like as if your house caught on fire that elephants stamped on the ruins afterwards. Yeah, right. This is what this looks like. Yeah. Or if you know your house, you know, you have two floors, maybe the first floor collapses during that fire. And, you know, you have some crushing issues on top of it. But chances are things like that hopefully aren't happening to most people. But if they do, you're secure. If they do, your money, your generational wealth is protected. Anyways, guys, let's jump into the numbers. I want to talk about Tucker. I want to talk about with about everything that's been happening. Let's check it out. The Bitcoin numbers, is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped seeds do it yourself kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates instead of just writing them on paper. Don't store your generational wealth on paper. Paper is prone to water damage, fire damage. You want to put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet Earth titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer and these letter stamps. And once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere. No risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamp seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire. They're also crush proof, waterproof, non -corrosive and time proof. All things that paper is not allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul. Stamp your seed on stamp seed. All right, guys, I literally made it super easy for you guys. You can scan the QR code on your screen. It'll take you directly to the stamp seed website and you can use promo code simply to get 15 percent off any of the stamp seed products. And I know you guys are doing custom back plates, too. I saw some that were really bad ass. Yeah. So do you have one, by the way, on hand? I do, actually.
Bloomberg Law
Fresh update on "100 million" discussed on Bloomberg Law
"There was a date in here state 4 Paxton in the case just before the impeachment proceedings began and the judge said once those proceedings wrap she's ready to get this case moving again in Harris County. And as you said there is an investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department's public integrity section. Is that on the same allegations that were testified to in the impeachment trial? That's right so these top employees in Paxton's office who we call the whistleblowers they reported Paxton's conduct to the FBI as it relates to advancing causes on behalf of his friend and political donor Nate Paul and the FBI and the DOJ they've been investigating we haven't seen the result of that investigation up to this point but those cases are ongoing. And just to be clear he was reelected last year to a third term despite all these criminal and ethical allegations. That's exactly right and that was a point that we heard from Paxton's defense counsel throughout the proceedings. They said Texas voters knew about these allegations and they didn't care. They elected him anyway and so why should the state senate overturn that? Why should they overturn the will of the voters? And Paxton seems newly emboldened by his acquittal. Some political experts think that he could gain prominence on the national stage. I think that's totally fair. I mean from the beginning Paxton's reputation has been built on being a conservative agitator who does the Biden administration over everything that they do and he's worked to align himself with former President Donald Trump who we saw go a through similar thing during his presidency being acquitted in impeachment cases and only serving to boost his reputation and I think that that's exactly what we're going to see happen here with Paxton who's going certainly to be emboldened by this outcome. I think we're still waiting kind of with bated breath to see what his first moves are going to be now that he's been reinstated to the office but I think it's certainly fair to say that this has only helped to bolster his reputation within his own party. A lot more to come in the legal sagas of Ken Paxton and I know you'll be following that for us Madeline thanks so much. That's Bloomberg Texas legal reporter Madeline Meckleburg. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show a new legal battle is emerging over whether schools should tell parents that their children are using new preferred nouns. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Missed your favorite Bloomberg radio show. Bloomberg Bloomberg Business Week, Masters in Business, Bloomberg Intelligence and more are also available as podcasts. Listen today on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This is a Bloomberg Money Minute. Movies are giving the music industry a boost. Jack Black's Peaches from the Super Mario Brothers movie reached over 100 million streams on Spotify. A single from FastX's soundtrack, Angel Part One. Did the same. the Dance night. Dua Lipa's disco anthem that serves as the new Barbie movies big dance number. And the end reached over 200 million plays on Spotify. H -Box 20 has seen an uptick in streams of its music since the film's debut because Ken sings their song Push. And 1997 Aqua's Barbie Girl single got a boost with a And boost. I'm Dan Schwartzman in the Bloomberg Newsroom. Here's some of the stories we're watching. A big week of earnings reports coming up with Costco and Cintas set to open their books on followed Tuesday by Nike on Thursday and Carnival on Friday. A strong dollar could hurt both Nike and Carnival as at least a third of their sales come from abroad, which could dampen revenue growth. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to sue Amazon for antitrust violations this coming week. Bloomberg's Tracy Jahnke with details. Amazon sellers who use the company's massive logistics operation to pack and ship our orders pay Amazon a fee for the services and next month the company was planning to charge merchants for not using its shipping services. Amazon at some point scrapped the idea ahead of an expected antitrust trust action by the Federal Trade Commission. The regulators are to file suit against Amazon in the coming dates based in part on allegations the company is trying to coerce its marketplace merchants into using those logistics services. Tracy Jahnke, Bloomberg Radio. Thanks Tracy. California Governor Gavin Newsom has placed himself in an awkward political position by vetoing a bill that would have required drivers in autonomous trucks. While driverless trucks are not yet on California roadways, manufacturers had argued that the legislation would have stifled the industry in the state. The bill though was backed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has been an influential constituency of the Democratic Party. Newsom says that the bill is not needed and that concerns about jobs and safety are better addressed by regulators than by legislation. It's getting harder to find streaming entertainment services that don't run ads. Bloomberg's Nathan Hager reports on this annoyance. Amazon Prime Video is the latest to join the trend, announcing ad supported streaming will be the default in the U .S. next year. Netflix and Disney Plus also introduced ad supported tiers this year. Along with higher rates for everyone, Amazon says it'll only charge more if customers want to skip ads, but this move means Apple TV is the only major streaming platform that's still advertising free. Nathan Hager,
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 669:FTXs $3.4B Liquidation and Armstrongs DeFi Challenge
"Beef, it's what's for dinner. Funded by beef farmers and ranchers. Good evening and welcome to the Crypto Overnighter. I'm Nick Ademus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Thursday, September 14th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas and no BS. But we do have the news. So let's talk about that. Tonight, we're dissecting the court approved liquidation of FTX's 3 .4 billion dollars in digital assets. We'll also delve into the tug of war between the CFTC and Coinbase's CEO, Brian Armstrong, over DeFi regulation. And if that's not enough, we have FWOBY's rebranding fiasco, the SEC going after stoner cats, Singapore's regulatory hammer coming down on 3AC and the EU passing a new crypto tax law. Get ready for a deep dive into the land of the markets that never sleep. FTX received court approval to liquidate its digital assets. These assets total approximately 3 .4 billion dollars. Judge John Dorsey made the decision in the U .S. bankruptcy court for the District of Delaware. The assets include 1 .16 billion dollars in Solana, 560 million dollars in Bitcoin and 119 million dollars in XRP. Galaxy Digital, led by Mike Novogratz, will act as the investment manager responsible for conducting the sale. The court approved plan allows FTX to sell up to 100 million dollars worth of tokens each week. This cap could potentially be doubled for individual tokens. FTX's liquidation plan was approved despite some opposition. The exchange has assets totaling around 7 billion dollars, which it aims to use to repay creditors. The exchange also has 38 real estate properties in the Bahamas. The liquidation is part of FTX's broader strategy to repay creditors and is considered one of the most significant asset liquidations in cryptocurrency history. FTX co -founder and former CEO Sam Bankman Fried is awaiting trial in October. The exchange has the option to sell, stake or hedge its digital assets. This court approval is a landmark moment not just for FTX but for the entire crypto industry. It sets a precedent for how bankrupt crypto exchanges can handle asset liquidation, especially when creditors are involved. While the court's decision may seem like a straightforward legal procedure, it has far -reaching implications. For one, it's a nod to the legitimacy of crypto assets as a form of property that can be liquidated to repay debts, a concept still not universally accepted. Moreover, the involvement of Galaxy Digital adds another layer of credibility to the process. It's not just some random entity handling the liquidation, it's a well -known firm. Mike Novogratz is a name many in the crypto community trust. This could set a standard for future cases where large sums of crypto assets are involved, from FTX's crumbling empire to a battle for DeFi's very soul. While FTX's liquidation exposes vulnerabilities, the CFTC and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong are locking horns over the future of decentralized finance. Now before we jump in, hit that like button if you appreciate unfiltered insights.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
A highlight from Crypto Update | SEC Says Stoner Cats NFTs Are Unregistered Securities, With Host Noelle Acheson
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken. To make sure you don't miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Now, a markets roundup. Crypto markets edged higher today as details emerged regarding the timing of FTX asset sales. You may recall a couple of days ago, I talked about how asset prices were down because of fears of downward pressure from the sale of Bitcoin and other tokens held by the FTX estate. Well, yesterday, a judge ruled that the estate could proceed with the asset sales, but gently. The estate does not have to give advance notice of any sales, but it is limited to $100 million worth a week. This can be increased in special circumstances and with some paperwork, but on the whole, it looks like the market impact will be less than originally feared. The estate can take its time with the sale and is likely to take care to not adversely impact the market. As at 10 a .m. Eastern Time, Bitcoin was up over 1 .7%, trading at almost $26 ,565. Ether is up 1 .8 % over the past 24 hours, trading at $1 ,624. In traditional markets, US stocks have been moving higher after US retail sales came in notably higher than expected, with a month -to -month increase in August of 0 .6 % versus the consensus forecast of 0 .2%. This is higher even than July's month -on -month increase of 0 .5 % and reinforces the surprising resilience of the US consumer. However, the jump was largely due to higher -than -expected receipts at the gas pump due to higher oil prices. This could end up crowding out other expenditures, especially as the cost of credit starts to bite and as student loan repayments resume next month. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time today, the S &P 500 and the Nasdaq were both up roughly 0 .3%, while the Dow Jones was lagging with a 0 .1 % gain. The strength of the US economy was also a tailwind over in Europe, with the FTSE 100 index up more than 1 .3 % as at 10 a .m. Eastern Time today. The mood was also lifted by hints from the European Central Bank that the 25 -basis -point hike delivered this morning could be the last. Inflation in the Eurozone is still much higher than the target rate, and staff raised the forecast for the end of 2023 to 5 .6%, dropping to 3 .2 % in 2024. Obviously, the phrase higher for longer does not just apply to US rate expectations, as at 10 a .m. Eastern Time, the German DAX index was up almost 0 .5%, while the broader Eurostock 600 was up 1%. Over in Asia, the Nikkei jumped 1 .4 % as sharper -than -expected drop in machinery orders for July dampened speculation that the Bank of Japan could raise rates in the near future. In China, the Shanghai Composite was largely flat with no clear catalysts, while the Hang Seng index rose a modest 0 .2%. In commodities, oil prices continued their climb today, with the Brent crude benchmark breaching $93 per barrel for the first time since November of last year. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time, Brent was trading at $93 .25, up more than 1 .2 % over the past 24 hours, and up a painful 13 .6 % since the beginning of this year. This does not bode well for global inflation figures. Gold is largely flat today as traders digest the latest US economic data. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time today, it was still hovering around $1 ,906 per ounce.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from MARKETS DAILY: Crypto Update | SEC Says Stoner Cats NFTs Are Unregistered Securities, With Host Noelle Acheson
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken. To make sure you don't miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Now, a markets roundup. Crypto markets edged higher today as details emerged regarding the timing of FTX asset sales. You may recall a couple of days ago, I talked about how asset prices were down because of fears of downward pressure from the sale of Bitcoin and other tokens held by the FTX estate. Well, yesterday, a judge ruled that the estate could proceed with the asset sales, but gently. The estate does not have to give advance notice of any sales, but it is limited to $100 million worth a week. This can be increased in special circumstances and with some paperwork, but on the whole, it looks like the market impact will be less than originally feared. The estate can take its time with the sale and is likely to take care to not adversely impact the market. As at 10 a .m. Eastern Time, Bitcoin was up over 1 .7%, trading at almost $26 ,565. Ether is up 1 .8 % over the past 24 hours, trading at $1 ,624. In traditional markets, US stocks have been moving higher after US retail sales came in notably higher than expected, with a month -to -month increase in August of 0 .6 % versus the consensus forecast of 0 .2%. This is higher even than July's month -on -month increase of 0 .5 % and reinforces the surprising resilience of the US consumer. However, the jump was largely due to higher -than -expected receipts at the gas pump due to higher oil prices. This could end up crowding out other expenditures, especially as the cost of credit starts to bite and as student loan repayments resume next month. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time today, the S &P 500 and the Nasdaq were both up roughly 0 .3%, while the Dow Jones was lagging with a 0 .1 % gain. The strength of the US economy was also a tailwind over in Europe, with the FTSE 100 index up more than 1 .3 % as at 10 a .m. Eastern Time today. The mood was also lifted by hints from the European Central Bank that the 25 -basis -point hike delivered this morning could be the last. Inflation in the Eurozone is still much higher than the target rate, and staff raised the forecast for the end of 2023 to 5 .6%, dropping to 3 .2 % in 2024. Obviously, the phrase higher for longer does not just apply to US rate expectations, as at 10 a .m. Eastern Time, the German DAX index was up almost 0 .5%, while the broader Eurostock 600 was up 1%. Over in Asia, the Nikkei jumped 1 .4 % as sharper -than -expected drop in machinery orders for July dampened speculation that the Bank of Japan could raise rates in the near future. In China, the Shanghai Composite was largely flat with no clear catalysts, while the Hang Seng index rose a modest 0 .2%. In commodities, oil prices continued their climb today, with the Brent crude benchmark breaching $93 per barrel for the first time since November of last year. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time, Brent was trading at $93 .25, up more than 1 .2 % over the past 24 hours, and up a painful 13 .6 % since the beginning of this year. This does not bode well for global inflation figures. Gold is largely flat today as traders digest the latest US economic data. At 10 a .m. Eastern Time today, it was still hovering around $1 ,906 per ounce.
Daily Crypto Report
A highlight from "SEC Chair Gary Gensler reiterates tough stance on crypto" Sep 14, 2023
"It's 8 a .m. Eastern, September the 14th, and this is your daily crypto report. Bitcoin is up slightly at $26 ,496, ETH is up slightly at $1 ,625, and Binance Coin is up slightly at $212. SEC Chair Gary Gensler reiterated a tough stance on the crypto industry during a conference, emphasizing that much of the crypto space is non -compliant with securities laws and Gensler expressed concerns that issues in the crypto industry could affect the broader economy by eroding investor confidence. He described the crypto economy as relatively small but potentially impactful. Gensler also highlighted the prevalence of misconduct in the industry and criticized attempts to circumvent regulations, notably he didn't call for new legislation in the sector. Well, crypto services provider Paxos has been identified as the entity responsible for paying an unusually high fee of 19 .89 Bitcoin or around 500k for a Bitcoin transaction involving around just $200. The company acknowledged the error, describing it as a bug on a single transfer, and stated that it had been resolved. Paxos is in contact with the miner in an attempt to recover the funds. With crypto exchange, Hobi has rebranded internationally as HTX and is focused on expanding. The aim is to apply for more licenses in various jurisdictions over the next decade, according to Justin Sun, an advisor to the firm. HTX will serve the English -speaking user base, and the exchange has already obtained seven licenses in different countries, including Lithuania, Dubai, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil. The rebranding aims to make the name more accessible to Western users. HTX plans to involve users in the listing process by holding votes on which crypto projects to list, making it more democratic. Okbank, Thailand's second largest bank, has created a $100 million fund to invest in Web3 and AI startups. Within Web3, it will consider various tech startups, including those involved in ZK proofs and liquid staking derivatives. The fund aims to invest in over 30 startups and funds worldwide, focusing on the U .S., the EU, Israel, and AIPAC. And finally, crypto exchange OKX is aiming for long -term partnerships with sports giants McLaren and Manchester City. Their deal with McLaren is currently in four or five years, and they aim to extend it for a decade. OKX's global chief marketing officer expressed the company's commitment to forging lasting partnerships in the sports world. Well, that's all for us today. Visit us at dailycryptoreport .io for sources and links. And listen to us everywhere else you podcast under Daily Crypto Report. Hey, my name is Lo van Ruemf, and I've been working my ass off as a celebrity stylist by day and a podcast host by night. At the Low Life podcast, it's all about keeping it real. We're talking fashion, beauty to religion, sex, drugs, mental health. I mean, there's no topic off limits here, and vulnerability is mandatory. You can find my podcast, The Low Life, that's L -O, no W, everywhere and anywhere you listen to your podcasts. New episodes are out every Thursday. We'll see you then. It's pretty eerie, you know, you're in a place that no human's ever been before. This is Armchair Explorer, where the world's greatest adventurers tell their best stories from the road. And four of us were swept down the side of the mountain, and then I knew there was no way out of this thing. From the heart pounding to the inspiring and the downright insane. Find Armchair Explorer, a part of APT Podcast Studios, wherever you get your podcasts. Go and find what it is in the world that matches that worldness in yourself.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 668:SECs AI Dragnet and Ripples Courtroom Win
"Why do tacos get their own day of the week? Is it because Mondays are so rough, we need a Tuesday filled with beefy tortillas shared with good friends? If so, why don't we have Wellington Wednesdays stroganoff Saturdays, and heck, beefball Mondays? Then Mondays would just be another reason to enjoy our favorite beef with our favorite people. Together, we bring more. Beef, it's what's for dinner, funded by beef farmers and ranchers. Good evening, and welcome to the Crypto Overnighter. I'm Nick Ademus, and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Wednesday, September 13th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight, we dig into the SEC's AI surveillance plans led by Gary Gensler. What does that mean for privacy and regulation? Ripple scores a point in court, but what's the real cost? OneCoin's co -founder faces 20 years behind bars, a reminder to always do your due diligence. Craig Wright dodges criminal sanctions, but raises questions about legal loopholes in crypto. North Korea's Lazarus Group makes another appearance, this time targeting Coinex for a cool $55 million. And finally, Coinbase is lighting up Bitcoin transactions by integrating the Lightning Network. Gary Gensler confirmed the U .S. Securities Exchange Commission uses artificial intelligence for financial surveillance. This revelation came during a Senate oversight hearing on September 12th. Gensler stated that the SEC uses AI technologies to monitor the financial sector for signs of fraud and manipulation. The SEC has not issued a formal public declaration detailing the use of AI. Gensler also faced criticism for the SEC's rulemaking pace and duration of comment periods. He remains adamant that crypto trading platforms should adhere to rigorous U .S. securities regulations. The SEC chair argues that most crypto tokens will likely pass the investment contract test. Gensler cited noncompliance with securities laws in the crypto industry, leading to the agency's enforcement approach. He also mentioned that the SEC has filed approximately 750 enforcement actions in the last year. Gensler warned that AI's ability to generate deepfake content poses a genuine threat to financial markets. He defended the SEC's key rulemaking initiatives amid heavy pushback from lawmakers. The SEC aims to bring DeFi under its jurisdiction, stating that existing rules also apply to the crypto sector. The SEC's adoption of AI for financial surveillance is a significant development. It's a clear signal that the regulatory body is doubling down on its efforts to monitor and control the crypto space. This move aligns with Gensler's consistent stance that the crypto industry should fall under the same regulatory frameworks as traditional financial markets. The use of AI could potentially tighten the noose around crypto activities, making it more challenging for traders and investors to operate freely. While the technology can be a powerful tool for detecting fraud and manipulation, it also raises concerns about privacy and the extent of government surveillance. Gensler's warning about the potential for AI -generated deepfake content adds another layer of complexity. It suggests that the SEC is not only looking to regulate, but also to protect the market from new types of threats. However, Gensler's approach has not been without its critics. The pace of rulemaking and the lack of clarity have drawn ire from both the crypto community and lawmakers. The SEC's aggressive enforcement actions, totaling around 750 in the last year, indicate a strategy of regulation by enforcement, which many find to be problematic. Now, if you're worried about Big Brother and C3PO teaming up to watch your every move, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe. So now, let's pivot from surveillance to legal battles. Ripple is scoring in court. What does that mean for crypto and regulation? Ripple is in the midst of a legal battle with the SEC. The SEC initially accused Ripple of violating federal securities laws by selling its native cryptocurrency, XRP, without registering it as a security. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and President Monica Long have been vocal about their intent to fight the SEC all the way through. The company has already spent over $100 million defending the case. A significant ruling came in July when US District Court Judge Analisa Torres stated that XRP was not necessarily a security. This opened the doors for Ripple to expand its business not just in the US, but globally. The SEC requested permission to file an interlocutory appeal against this ruling, but as for now, the request has yet to be decided upon. Ripple is also focusing 80 % of its hiring efforts outside the US, targeting markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and Dubai. The ongoing Ripple vs SEC case is a test for the crypto industry's relationship with regulators. Ripple's refusal to back down sends a strong message to the SEC and other regulatory bodies that the crypto industry will not be bullied. The SEC's actions here are part of a broader crackdown on the crypto industry. Frankly, I see it as an overreach of authority. The recent court ruling in favor of Ripple has not only given the company a legal upper hand, it also provided a glimmer of hope for the broader crypto ecosystem. It challenges the SEC's narrative and could set a precedent for other cases. The fact that Ripple is planning to focus its hiring outside the US is a clear sign of how regulatory uncertainty is driving crypto innovation away from the US, a point that should concern US policymakers. The case is shaping up to be a defining moment for crypto regulation in the US. It could have far reaching implications for the industry at large. And really, this whole thing is about the future of crypto regulation and the limits of governmental oversight. A point for Ripple, but at what cost? Make sure you're following us to stay updated on this legal thriller. But speaking of costs, some people are paying dearly. From courtrooms to prison cells, let's delve into the dark underbelly of crypto scams with OneCoin's co -founder, Carl Greenwood.
Cinemavino
A highlight from Legend
"And welcome back to cinema vino. We've got a two man game going. It's me and Sean Jordan. Just one little handshake over here. Coming at you. We're like a garage band, two members just coming at you with some hard rock. Tenacious D. Yeah, exactly. Or the black keys, the white stripes. Yeah. Yeah. Both of those. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Summer Chaos is now, this is the home stretch. Mine Meg. If this is the white stripes. Yeah. I think you're going to have to be. All right. Yeah. You're holding down, you're playing. Lying down the ones and the twos. Yeah. You're playing the quarter notes. That's about it. Yup. No fills. Which is how I like my drums anyway. She made the notes in the vamp up to the chorus. A little bit. That was one of the first songs I learned. There was a little bit of flavor. It was like a rice cake with a little bit of salt on it. Not a lot of salt, but a little bit of salt. Yup. So, this is a penultimate episode of Summer of Chaos. We're going to talk about legend. No, it's not penultimate. We've got this and then we've got Battle Royale. Oh, and then Dread. You're right. Dread. So, this is. And Robocop. This is penultimate to the penultimate. Yeah. Penultimate recording. And then I think Robocop's a gap. It's just kind of in between. Right. We just toss it in just because it sounds. Gap here. Yeah. Just a little bit of something to fill in. It's like a caulk that we used in between some tiles. Don't like that. But that's the metaphor I went for and there you go. It's a grout, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. Drinking that imagery, won't you? So, we're going to talk about legend with Tom Cruise and we're drinking some white board dough. For those of you who are coming in late to this series, basically, we do a random wheel. We spin a wheel. We put a bunch of varietals on the wheel and also like beer and cocktails. Whatever the wheel picks, that's what we do for the Summer of Chaos. These movies were all picked out at random. We put random movies in the hat, drew them out. So, pretty much anything goes for this entire summer. And so, same thing with wine. Anything goes. So, for this one, we got white Bordeaux. This is Chateau La Fresnel. This is a 2022 white Bordeaux. Little bit of background for those who may not know. We were actually talking about this before the podcast that Bordeaux is now known as a red wine region. But up until about 50, 60 years ago, it was a white wine region. It was known for its white grapes. Bordeaux are going to be... White Bordeaux are primarily Sauvignon Blanc with some Simeon and some Muscadel. There's a few other grapes they mix in there, but those are the main three that you're going to see. Then they're mainly Sauvignon Blancs. Is this kind of like how like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party kind of switched identities somewhere in the like 40s, 50s? Around the New Deal? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. Now, it's like five, six to one red wines to white. It used to be the opposite. You'll also see a type of wine made from these same grapes called a Sauternes, which is going to be... It's made completely differently. It's going to be a lot sweeter, a lot more sugary. Those are very fancy, high -end, expensive white wines. So, basically, just from the price tag alone, you'll never confuse a Sauternes with a white Bordeaux. These are going to be more affordable, you know, $15, $20 range. Not super sweet. It's a little more tart, a little peachy? Dry. And the first thing I think of is Sauvignon Blanc. And these will have some characteristics of the same characteristics of other Sauvignon Blancs in the world. They're going to be a little bit grassy, a little bit citrusy, grapefruity. They're going to have some of those same kind of flavors to them. The main thing that's going to distinguish these wines is going to be... I've heard it referred to as minerality. I've heard it referred to as wet concrete. I've heard it referred to as chalk. Tasty. Yeah, limestone. But kind of that dry, refreshing edge that you don't necessarily find in other parts of the world. Kind of like what brings the harshness of mineral water versus the softness of tap. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to put that. Yeah. It's got like a bite to it. It's got kind of like a... Little edge. Yeah. And you don't find that... Like for example, New Zealand's often been known as grapefruit bombs. Big fruit bombs. And you don't see that as much. This is my favorite region for Sauvignon Blanc. They're balanced. That's why I love French wines in general. They don't go out of the way in any one direction. They're nice and balanced. And so it's great for that. This one has that nice... It's got some grassiness to it. It's got some fruit. But it's dry. And so this would be great. I mean, people say seafood. I'm not a big seafood fan, but kind of a lighter seafood meal is perfect for that. You're not a big seafood fan? Not a big seafood fan. Period? Not really. Shrimp? I mean, I don't mind shrimp. It's not my first thing I go to. Lobster. Yeah, same. Bass. Catfish. I don't mind catfish. I've had some catfish. That's garbage. Catfish is garbage. But I remember when we went to Barcelona, we took a cooking class. It was on our honeymoon. My wife and I, we did a... It was all seafood. We had some paella. We made some paella. We did octopus. We did squid. I mean, we tried the gamut of seafood stuff that they had in the Mediterranean. It was like... That was a good indication. It's like, I don't like this. This is not for me. Yeah, not my taste. It's fair. It's fair. But I will say that we did a wine kind of similar to this, a Spanish white. And yeah, this would be perfect with a wide variety of seafood. Some of the stuff that's bigger and more buttery, you might want to go for a white burgundy, like a chard. But this is a good hot weather, outdoor type of wine. It's nice and refreshing. I like it a lot. Yeah, 25 bucks, not a whole lot of money. But yeah, any good wine store, you should be able to find a nice white Bordeaux section. So look for those while the weather's still warm. But now, legend. Talk about this movie a bit. This was released in the United States April 18th, 1986. So... You say in the United States. Where did it come out before? It was released in Europe the year before. This had a very difficult production. This was a difficult movie to realize. It has a lot going on. So this grossed worldwide $23 million against a $25 million budget. In 86? That's a big budget. Huge. And for several reasons. A big reason for that is that when they started filming, a fire broke out and burned down the 007 studios where they were filming at Leaves in England. So pretty much had to build new sets. That's probably all the magic. Exactly. Yeah, some of the Sprite costumes caught fire. Or the unicorn hair. I can imagine, yeah. It's one wrong look, that unicorn horn. Yeah, it's gone. But they had to build new sets. And Ridley Scott's original cut of the movie ran for between two and a half, three hours. So... Jeez. And the final cut was like, what, hour and a half? Yeah. The version that I watched, I don't know if you saw the original 89 -minute version or if you watched the director's cut. I think I watched the 89 version. Okay, I looked around. I had trouble finding it. That's the version I know the best, so I went back to that one. The director's cut? No, the original. Oh, the original. Yeah. There's a director's cut out there. Is it like two to three hours? No. So basically, when the final cut of this print was released, Ridley Scott watched this cut and freaked out and thought that basically American audience couldn't grasp this much plot. And so he cut the film basically in half, down to 89 minutes. And when it came out, it got mediocre reviews. Obviously, he didn't do well at the box office. He just watered it down too much? Yeah. Gene Siskel put this as one of his worst movies of that year. And the international cut that came out the year before was 93 minutes. And it got a little bit better reviews, but still not great. And then in 2002, somebody found a full work print of the movie in a can somewhere. And so they took that out and restored it, remastered it, and really Scott added about 25 minutes to the cut that the director's cut. So it comes in at like 115 minutes, give or take. And he and Tom Cruise have gone on the record saying that's the version to see. I was going to say, I was reading that Tom Cruise saw the movie in theaters and was like, that's not the movie we filmed. Yeah. That's not it. I mean, you could imagine with that much cut out, it's going to be almost incoherent. It's like a whole other act. Yeah. Yeah. And so basically, the director's cut, yeah, it's a whole other fleshed out thing. And I have seen that once. I saw it when it came out. I think I've got that on DVD somewhere. And the one thing I would say is it does, it adds a few scenes. It makes the motivations a little bit deeper, especially for the character of the darkness and his relationship with the princess, Lily, and the stuff there. It's kind of just, not to cut to the chase, but it just kind of comes out of nowhere. He's just like obsessed with her. He's just like, oh, I must have her. It feels very rushed. It feels like a plot of necessity, not like a plot of, you know, any reason. They're just like, we need to stall him. How do we do it? Love interest. Yeah. And it's like, it's like I'm telling a story to my three -year -old and it's like, I got to kind of get something else in here. You got to kind of yada, yada, yada over motivations. We're coming in for a landing too quick. We got to just shoot. Pull up. Yeah. But so basically, this is a fairly straightforward fantasy story. Tom Cruise plays Jack, who is a protector of the forest. I was a little vague on what exactly he is. Is he a bard? Is he a ranger? I mean, he'd be more druid than anything. Is he a druid? Yeah, I couldn't place what he was supposed to be. It's like, this is where we need Travis. Yeah, he would be. And if Travis had an answer to that, I would be impressed. Because to me, they don't spell that out at all. I guess he would be more of a ranger. Yeah. Because he didn't really have any sort of like shape -shifting ability or had any ability to talk with trees. Really, his only thing was he had like one -on -one connection with the sprites, right? That's about it. Yeah, he had good buddies. A working relationship. And he wore a loincloth. Yes. So there was that. Dude, he was showing that thing off. He was. And that's what I, you know, in that situation, it's like, check out my hairless legs. My supine body. Yeah, check out these smooth legs. But, so Mia Sarah plays Lily. Now, this is her starring debut. Next year, she would go on to play in Ferris Bueller, amongst other things. Her hair when she transforms into a dark version. Awesome. Now, this great production value is great. Everything, costumes, hair. For 25 million, it better be. Yeah. Yeah. And those are real unicorns. Yeah, they better be. Yeah, I mean, now it's like, that'd be 100 million plus to make this thing. Easy. Easy. Easy. So yeah, Lord of Darkness, played by Tim Curry, who is unrecognizable in the mountain of makeup. Honestly, but might be one of my favorite representations of the devil. Yeah. Like, this makeup job is incredible. And in theory, we'll get to this later, that should be great casting to have Tim Curry. Yeah. I almost want to see more of Tim Curry in the face. Like, see more of him, you know. Almost, you know, Faustian devil and Daniel Webster kind of thing, where it's like, you can see like him being rascally or whatever. But yeah, so Lord of Darkness seeks to cover the world in darkness. Plot out the sun. Conveniently, yeah. Typical plot device. For that, he needs the horn of a unicorn, which is the most sacred and majestic of all fantastic creatures. Basically, he wants to take the unicorns out of the world, take the horns out of the world, and the world. The representation of purity. The horn of the unicorn. Yes. The world goes dark. Everything turns into kind of a barren, frigid tundra of darkness. He just has goblins that work for him inexplicably? Yeah, incompetent goblins. Yeah. It's nice. But they rhyme. They talk in riddles. They do. They do rhyme. But you know, he kind of has the James Bond villain of incompetent people working under him, you know. If anything, that's the thing that slows him down as much as, you know, these James Bond villains. Like, you hired a bunch of idiots. He also has, like, the Bond villain thing of, like, doing a lot of monologuing? Yes. Let me vamp for five minutes while you prepare your thing to destroy me. Yeah, let's me blather.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Jeremy Allaire on Circle's Multi-Decade Strategy and Where Stablecoin Regulation Is Headed
"Hi everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor of Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full -time. This is the September 12th, 2023 episode of Unchained. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for Layer 0 is now securing every Layer 0 message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to Web 3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer 0 messaging. Visit layer0 .network to learn more. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solutions can provide you with lightning -fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all while ensuring security rooted on Ethereum. Arbitrum's newest addition, Orbit, enables you to build your own tailor -made Layer 3. Visit arbitrum .io today. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Buy, trade, and spend crypto on the Crypto .com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first seven days. Download the Crypto .com app and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Jeremy Allaire, co -founder, chairman, and CEO of Circle. Welcome, Jeremy. Thank you, Laura. It's really great to be back on the show and see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been a while, you know, out of any desire to not talk to you, because Circle has been making waves, and one of the most recent bits of news is that you've dissolved the center consortium that was managing the development of USDC, and Coinbase now has taken a stake in Circle. What was the impetus behind these moves? Yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, there are a few pieces to this. I think the first is, you know, if you go back a number of years, you know, we sort of invented USDC and kind of debuted it to the world, you know, just over five years ago. And, you know, when we created USDC, you know, we had a vision for like what a protocol could be for fiat tokens is what we called them. They weren't called stable coins really broadly then, but some people did. But that could work, you know, on blockchains and that you could build something that would allow for a kind of interoperable value exchange, you know, built on these open networks. And so we had a big set of ideas, and we really thought about these kinds of protocols as things that would benefit from sort of having standards around them. And it was really important to us when we got started that we could kind of develop those standards together with other industry leaders and kind of have, you know, a sort of shared stake in the success of a protocol like USDC. And so we were very fortunate in 2018 to forge a partnership with Coinbase. It was a really important strategic partnership for both firms to drive USDC in the market. And as part of that, you know, Circle was sort of issuing USDC, it was sort of were the electronic regulated money transmission firm and issuing it. But we had a lot of ideas for how that could evolve over time. But also, most importantly, while there were regulations around like what money transmission was and how a firm like Circle needed to operate, there were a lot of things about stable coins in particular that, you know, there weren't really regulations around like how to hold the reserves, how to manage the security of the network itself. You know, all these kind of governance issues in a sense that were needed and how to deal with, you know, law enforcement interactions and other things. And so we created Center Consortium with this idea of kind of creating self -governance around a stable coin and published more and more of the policies of that and so on. Now, what's happened in five years, a lot of things have happened. And so one is, you know, USDC went from nothing to being one of the most important digital currencies and digital assets in the world today. It went from, you know, very small to being, you know, a billion dollar plus, you know, revenue stream business today. But also most critically is, you know, really starting a few years ago, governments sort of said, well, we're actually going to govern this. We see stable coins as part of what I refer to as the prudential regulatory framework, meaning the regulatory framework that the central banks and the major regulators of payment systems wanted to have rules around. And that was really key. And so kind of coming back to the heart of your question, which is as governance goes from kind of a self -governance model to a government governance model, the kind of nature of this changed. And so, you know, working together with Coinbase, we looked at, you know, how do we, you know, how do we make sure that Circle can continue to build and innovate and do what we need to do as the issuer and operator of this and do it in a way that is responsive to the regulations that are emerging all around the world on stable coins and stable coin issuers and make sure we can follow those guidelines now that there are rules that are kind of out there and also, you know, have really continued to have really strong aligned economic incentives to make this as widely successful as possible. And so a mixture of things there in terms of them taking a stake in Circle, Circle kind of taking full on ownership over all of the development operations of USDC, but also making sure that this can work in the context of all these new stable coin laws that are popping up around the world. Yeah, you know, it's funny because when I saw the news, it sort of felt like the consortia model was sort of the crypto way of doing things, and that was appropriate for a time when, yeah, USDC was smaller. This was something that was really kind of more focused on the crypto community. But of course, now the conversation has just changed so much and we have like regulators and lawmakers that are really looking at this space, you know, there's probably going to be legislation about it. And so, you know, it felt like, oh, they're moving to a model that can fit into existing regulations. Yeah, big time. Yeah, I mean, something else that was interesting, which I'm sure you saw, is that the news of this arrangement caused some speculation that Circle was setting itself up to be acquired by Coinbase. And I was wondering, as the CEO of Circle, which direction are you working toward when you're steering Circle to going public or to an acquisition by another company such as Coinbase? Right. We're definitely on the path to be an independent public company. We've had the benefit of having a number of strategic investors in the company over the years. You know, more recently, BlackRock took a minority stake in the company as part of a broader strategic partnership between the firms that was last year. Having a stake in a company can create really good product and value alignment, and that's really key. And it's important. I want to make sure that, you know, Coinbase has a stake in our long -term success in addition to being able to make money from USDC. I think that's like a win -win, but, you know, as a company, just to be clear, like it's our 10 -year anniversary. So, you know, it's a fun year for us. Congratulations. Thank you. And I say this often, but, you know, when we founded the company 10 years ago, you know, I made it very clear to my investors and employees that, you know, this is a multi -decade journey to really realize the vision of the company. And, you know, when you think about kind of where we are today, right, there's whatever, a hundred and some billion stablecoins in circulation. You know, yes, there's a lot of volume of transactions that are happening, but this is like barely begun to penetrate the financial system. And so there's just an enormous amount ahead and a general purpose, you know, protocol and utility for dollars on the internet, there's an enormous market to go after there, not just for the movement of money, but actually just having money represented and stored in this kind of form, you know, there's $25 trillion of electronic dollars in the world across the different kind of formats of that. And so we're really quite small. So, and frankly, like the utility of programmable money and the utility of a frictionless medium of exchange that becomes possible like this, we're like just beginning to see the value of that. And so, like, I would just say for everyone out there, like Circle still, even though we're doing a lot of revenue and very profitable, we're an early stage company, as far as I'm concerned. I view Circle as an early stage company right now. When I think about what I'm trying to do and what we're trying to build, it's a multi -decade kind of strategy and I'm excited to see that through and really to do that as a, you know, I hope a very strong, independent, publicly traded company. Well, one of the steps that's definitely going to take you out of the early stage development is that you recently announced that the largest e -commerce and payments firm in Latin America, Mercado Libre, announced that it's going to adopt USDC. So tell us a little bit about that partnership and what impact do you think it'll have on Circle? Yeah, I mean, it's very exciting. It's a tremendous firm that has paved the way for kind of modern commerce and they play a really big role in payments as well in Latin America. And it's part of a broader theme that we're seeing around the growth in sort of demand for digital dollars and demand for using those in markets where maybe local currencies aren't as exciting. And Latin America is definitely one of those places. But I think very specifically, you know, the first phases of this are going live, you know, in specific countries in Latin America. You know, ultimately, we envision that this will be very broadly rolled out. But I think it's important as we look at sort of indicators of where we are in the adoption of stablecoins, that this is going from, oh, this is just used as something to trade on DeFi or this is just, you know, used for arbitrage traders or whatever, you know, to... Speculation. Yeah. Speculation to... This is something that is fundamentally providing, you know, dollar store of value to people who need it, providing a very efficient cross -border payment mechanism for people who need it. And these are major mainstream companies that serve hundreds of millions of users. So, you know, Mercado Libre has, I believe, around 200 million customers. And that's tremendous. And so we think about, you know, how do we grow the TAM of wallets that can transact in USDC? And you know, Coinbase has over 100 million wallets that can transact in USDC. These kinds of partnerships really grow that. And there are many, many, you know, wallets that people use. I think MetaMask has 30 million active users and they can all transact in USDC. And so as we see more and more wallets, these traditional, you know, kind of fintech commerce firms, digital wallets companies, and then all the new people building, you know, the next account abstraction, smart account wallet that's going to be the killer app for making all this usable. Like as those things get built, it just creates more and more avenues for people to use USDC. And I want to talk about those tech developments, but before we move on, I just wanted to ask for the Mercado Libre. So obviously, like, let's say I'm in Chile and I, you know, I'm going to buy something on Mercado Libre. It would show me the Chilean peso price. But then in addition, would it have this price in USDC or is because like, is the consumer also recognizing that their price could be denominated in dollars? Is that how that will work? I don't actually have the like the details of the user experience exactly how that is set up in front of me. What I do know is that they have a lot of demand from their customers to hold and transact in dollars. And so this is really a really powerful way to move more of the store of value that exists for their customers into digital dollars. And then obviously, once you have those, the usefulness of them both within their own platform but the power of all this and the reason why stablecoins are interesting in some ways in the first place and USDC specifically is because of the reach, because of the interoperability. Like I want to I want to live in a world where I've got a digital wallet and I'm in the Philippines and I know someone in Brazil and I know someone wherever and like that's power of crypto, right? Open networks that you can transact over directly, peer to peer, interoperably, I mean, that's really the power. And so, you know, kind of, you know, I think that's ultimately the big unlock that comes from a partnership with Circle like this. And you've tweeted that 70 percent of USDC usage is from out of the US. Is it is that one of the drivers that people simply want to keep their savings in US dollar denominated currency or, you know, what's driving that? Yeah, well, it's a few things. I think the first is just the whole blockchain ecosystem, if you think about it, is highly global. Right. We know this just in general, just like there's just huge amounts of the activity are in markets all over the world. And so to the degree that you need, you know, a trusted redeemable digital dollar, right, USDC is a great option. And so it sort of follows the overall growth of that of that international market as well. However, we've absolutely seen a major uptick in basically that demand for either store of value in dollars. And we've seen that in particular come from emerging markets. And so we've seen growth in emerging markets, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, other places like this, where we've seen we're seeing just so many startups that are launching things and building partnerships with those major companies, major global companies as well that are actually embracing this as a way to settle transactions. That international dimension is very powerful, and I expect that to continue to be the case. And this, you know, I'm sure we'll get to this in the conversation, but this ties into like, why should the US government care about dollar stablecoins? Well, it turns out that it makes digital dollars a powerful export product of the United States that it enhances the soft power of the country and reinforces the economic interests of households, firms, and the government itself. And so there's a strategic alignment of interests between, you know, the proliferation of dollar stablecoins, especially ones that are well -regulated and really trying to follow the law and supervise and national economic interests and foreign policy interests as well, which is, you know, for some, you know, controversial, but it is it is a fact.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Crypto 2023: Even Vitalik Is Getting Hacked
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Monday, September 11th, and today we are catching up on everything in the cryptosphere from last weekend, including the founder of Ethereum getting hacked. Before we dive into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, hope you had a great weekend. Like I said, today we are doing a grab bag, catching up on just a ton of news, and let's start with the weird one. On Saturday, Ethereum co -founder Vitalik Buterin's Twitter account was compromised. The attacker used the account to tweet about a time -limited NFT promotion. Users that followed the link that tried to mint the NFT instead had their wallet drained. Around 700 ,000 in crypto tokens and NFTs were stolen. Now, the attack followed a similar pattern to many SIM swap attacks which have plagued high -profile crypto figures recently. An attacker fraudulently obtains control over the target's phone number and then uses two -factor authentication to gain access to Twitter or other services. The attacker then posts a link to a poison transaction for victims to sign. According to Unchained Sleuth's ZackXBT, there have been more than 53 SIM swap attacks over the past four months which have led to the theft of over 13 .3 million in crypto assets. Now, at this stage, we don't know exactly how the attacker gained access to Vitalik's Twitter account. Some assumed that Vitalik would be using more complicated security design than simple phone number based 2FA. If so, this attack speaks to much more sophisticated attacks targeting crypto figures. What was particularly insidious about this attack was how believable the fake communication was. The attacker's fake message was promoting a Q &A on a forthcoming Ethereum feature known as proto -dank sharding. Numerous high -profile industry figures were taken in by the fake message and signed transactions with their wallets. The highest profile NFT that was drained was the very first crypto punk to be claimed, valued at around $250 ,000. To some, the attack demonstrates a clear change in targets for scammers. DC Investors said, Still, others pointed out that it could have been a lot worse. Coin Bureau tweeted, Putting it more simply, CL207 tweeted, While Mac's short ETH, dude would have made $100 million, not $1 million. Still to others, this was just an example of how difficult it is still for normal people in the cryptosphere. Harrison at PompPunk on Chain wrote, Next up, staying in and around the Ethereum ecosystem, consensus -owned blockchain infrastructure firm Infura have announced plans to release a decentralized version of their service by the end of this year. Infura provides a range of blockchain infrastructure but are most well known for their Ethereum RPC nodes. As much as 50 % of Ethereum transactions are routed through Infura infrastructure, making their centralization an ongoing risk. As regulatory efforts move from enforcement to compliance, it's anticipated that regulators will look for intermediaries within the crypto ecosystem to deputize. And to many, a centralized Infura would be a natural fit for compliance enforcement. Indeed, we've already seen multiple instances of Infura being used as a tool for compliance. Last November, the firm announced that some 20 million Metamask users would have their wallets and IP addresses tracked using Infura. Consensus pushed back on the controversy by noting that Metamask allowed users to opt out by switching to a different RPC provider. In March, consensus blocked IPs from certain regions in an effort to comply with sanctions requirements. Also, in March, consensus blocked IPs from certain regions in an effort to comply with sanctions requirements. Users from Venezuela and Iran were among those who complained they could no longer use Metamask through Infura. At the time, consensus were criticized for restricting access more broadly than the sanctions called for, including blocking some U .S. residents who had emigrated from sanctioned nations. Still, it appears that consensus and the Ethereum ecosystem at large have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the censorship risk of RPC nodes. And Infura have been working on this decentralization project for over a year now. Now, the project will be rolled out in a number of phases. Infura refers to the first stage as the quote federated phase, where trusted partners will be brought on to run redundant versions of key infrastructure. Tom Hay, decentralized infrastructure product lead at Infura, said in a statement, We're looking to launch something later this year, and that is going to be a federated phase. The federated phase will last at least six months and will provide the network with the insight on how to build a sustainable model before introducing further decentralization. Now, according to the team at ConsenSys, aside from censorship resistance, adding more diversity and redundancy in RPC infrastructure could also improve the robustness of Ethereum in general. ConsenSys head of strategy Simon Morris said, If you have different people setting up their infrastructure in different ways on different cloud providers using different node software, then you can start to build antifragility into the system. Next up on this breakdown, a regulatory roundup. On Friday, the SEC filed their response in the Ripple lawsuit, arguing that the case should be allowed to proceed to appeal. Ripple had previously objected to the appeal, stating that the regulator had not made a sufficient argument to ground an appeal. The SEC is filing hitback, stating that, quote, The defendants themselves say that the issues have industry -wide significance and are of special consequence. They claimed that this pivotal decision should be subjected to the scrutiny of an appellate court to ensure a clear precedent is made. The SEC is filing hitback, stating that, quote, The defendants themselves say that the issues have industry -wide significance and are of special consequence. End quote. They claimed that this pivotal decision should be subjected to the scrutiny of an appellate court to ensure a clear precedent is made. The SEC noted that one judge has already rejected the Ripple decision as a persuasive precedent, opening the door to contradictory rulings. The regulator further argued that halting the rest of the Ripple case to deal with the appeal immediately would, quote, preserve the resources of the court. They even went so far as to take a swipe at Ripple, claiming that the firm was deliberately dragging out court proceedings. Speaking of the SEC, Republican House Whip Tom Emmer has introduced an appropriations amendment to rein in the SEC's crypto enforcement agenda. In a tweet, Emmer wrote, "...Gary Gensler has abused his authority to grow the administrative state to the detriment of the American people. Congress must use all our tools, including the appropriations process, to restrict Chair Gensler from further weaponizing taxpayer dollars." The appropriations amendment would limit the SEC from utilizing funds to pursue digital asset enforcement until comprehensive rules and regulations are put in place. Now, of course, Emmer has long been critical of the SEC's approach to crypto regulation. In June, he supported fellow Congressman Warren Davidson's SEC Stabilization Act proposal which would limit the authority of the SEC chair by introducing a sixth commissioner to require bipartisan support for regulatory actions. Gensler is scheduled to appear at an oversight hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. The House Financial Services Committee, meanwhile, will hold their SEC oversight hearing on September 27th. So we should get a chance to hear more about whether there has been any shifts in the Gensler -SEC attitude since some of these court proceedings have gone through. Now, moving over to the Fed. In a speech given at a fintech event on Friday, Fed Vice Chairman of Supervision Michael Barr made a number of comments about CBDCs and stablecoins. When it comes to CBDCs, Barr emphasized that the Fed is still firmly in the quote basic research phase and is far from making any decisions. Barr said that quote, Investigation and research are very different from decision -making about next steps in terms of payment system development and we are a long way from that. By way of detail, he explained that the research is currently focused on system architecture and tokenization models. Barr continued to reinforce the idea that the Fed won't make any decision on CBDC issuance without quote, clear support from the executive branch and the authorizing legislation from Congress. On stablecoins, Barr said quote, I remain deeply concerned about stablecoin issuance without strong federal oversight. If non -federally regulated stablecoins were to become a widespread means of payment and store of value, they could pose significant risks to financial stability, monetary policy, and the U .S. payment system. It is important to get the legislative and regulatory framework right before significant risks emerge. Now, Barr has recently spearheaded the Fed's Novel Activities Supervision Program, which requires banks to obtain a written non -objection before they can interact with stablecoins. He claimed that the safeguard was in line with previous guidance issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Barr argued that strong federal oversight of dollar -backed stablecoins was in the Fed's interest, arguing that the tokens quote, borrow the trust of the central bank. Now, of course, federal oversight of stablecoin issuers has become a line in the sand for establishment Democrats who sought to hold up the progress of stablecoin legislation back in July. Barr also reflected on the July launch of FedNow, which is the new instant gross settlement system operated by the Fed. He said that FedNow has been made available to depository institutions of all size, but quote, while current volumes on FedNow are small, I expect that participation will grow over time. Now, next up, one we talked about a bit in the weekly recap, but giving the details just for completeness. On Thursday, the CFTC announced enforcement actions against three D5 firms — Open, 0x, and Derridex — all settled lawsuits for offering unregistered derivatives products to U .S. customers. The fines were relatively small — $250 ,000, $200 ,000, and $100 ,000, respectively — but the message was clear. CFTC Director of Enforcement Ian McGinley said in a statement, Somewhere along the way, DeFi operators got the idea that unlawful transactions become lawful when facilitated by smart contracts. They do not. The DeFi space may be novel, complex and evolving, but the division of enforcement will continue to evolve with it and aggressively pursue those who operate unregistered platforms that allow U .S. persons to trade digital asset derivatives. Now, while both Open and Derridex were offering derivatives trading, the situation around 0x was a little more complex. 0x is an Open DEX platform which allows anyone to list tokens. They attracted the attention of the CFTC by simply having derivative tokens with embedded leverage listed. The CFTC claimed that simply retaining the ability to draw fees from the trading, though not actually profiting from the platform and having access to shut down the platform, was sufficient to be held liable for how other developers use the platform. Now, one CFTC commissioner offered a scathing dissent to the enforcement action. Commissioner Summer Mersinger wrote, Although each case presents different facts, they have been lumped together for commission consideration and vote, presumably for messaging purposes, as quote -unquote DeFi cases. She added that, I am concerned that the Commission in these cases is taking another step down the path of bringing enforcement actions when we should be engaging with the public. It is important to emphasize that Enforcement First has not always been the CFTC's default position. These cases are especially concerning in that they represent a significant shift in position on the merits of engagement with DeFi market participants. Finally today, over in the UK, the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority have pushed back the commencement date of some elements of strict new crypto advertising rules. The core rules will come into force on October 8th. They require advertisements to be clear, fair, and not misleading. In addition, risk warnings will now be mandatory in incentivizing platform use with both monetary and non -monetary rewards is prohibited. Other parts of the regulations could be pushed back to as late as January according to the FCA. Individual firms would need to apply for additional time on a case -by -case basis. The regulator explained that firms are running up against technical issues implementing some parts of the new rules. In particular, a 24 -hour cooling -off period which would allow customers to ask for full refunds is proving difficult to comply with. It would require programming changes to platforms at a minimum, if not an overhaul to business models. Lucy Casseldine, Director of Consumer Investment at the FCA said, As a proportionate regulator, we're giving firms that apply a little bit more time to get other reforms requiring technology and business change right. We'll maintain our close eye on firms during this extended implementation period. Now, the FCA's strict new rules have been criticized for their broad scope and draconian punishments. Foreign firms that advertise to UK customers would be covered by the regulations, which capture social media posts, websites, and in -app advertising. Influencers would be held liable for their promotion of crypto products, and the failure to adhere to the new regulations could result in criminal charges. The maximum punishment for breaches includes an unlimited fine or even jail time. The FCA has said that the strict rules are designed to Prevent harm to consumers from investing in crypto assets that do not match their risk appetite. The regulator added that It is up to consumers to decide whether they buy crypto assets, but they should do so based on fair and accurate information that helps them make effective investment decisions. So friends, this is the other side of the prepping for the next bull run. It is going to be a much tighter environment, certainly for any types of promotions. Although whether that will end scams given where we started this episode, I think that remains to be seen. However, that is going to do it for today's episode. I appreciate you guys listening as always. Until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other.
Bankless
A highlight from Surveillance Finance 101 with Seth Hertlein and Michael Mosier
"Hey, Bankless Nation. I put out a tweet last week that said this, who can come on bank lists and explain the modern financial surveillance apparatus? FADF, FinCEN, AMLKYC, OFAC, the Blacklist, the Graylist. How does it all work? Who makes the rules? But in the space for years, I still don't understand these dark corners. That's very much how I felt coming to this episode, needing the financial surveillance 101. I knew it was an octopus, knew it was this multi -headed hydra. I had no idea how deep its roots actually go, and today we unpack this with legal experts. Seth Hirtline, he's the VP of Global Policy at Ledger, and also Michael Mosier. He actually has spent some time in the belly of the beast at both FinCEN and OFAC. Now he's on our team. He's the guy inside the house. Yeah, and now he's on Team Crypto, so he's got some insider baseball that he's going to tell us as we make sense of this. This was a really fantastic episode. I know I want to get your comments on this episode, but before we do, we've got a message from our friends and sponsors over at Ave. David, what does Ave want bankless listeners to know? Ave wants you to know that Ave V3 is here. I mean, it's been here. It's been here for six months. So why does Ave want you to know that V3 is here? Well, because apparently over a billion dollars of capital doesn't know that because it's still in Ave V2. Not only that, but there is a button for migrating your capital to Ave V3. So Ave, if you are an Ave V2 enjoyer, which you are free to because it is permissionless open source technology, they still want you. Everything gets better if all of the liquidity goes to the same place. So if you are using Ave but you are using Ave, an old version of Ave, perhaps consider joining the rest of the crew in Ave V3. It has more liquidity than Ave V2, but also some extra features as well. So power asset isolation mode and compartmentalize your risks. It's got some gas optimizations. It's got some extra bells and whistles. It's just a better version of Ave. App .Ave .com. But then also there is Ave Grants. If you are a builder building on Ave, especially their brand new stablecoin Go, there are grants available to you. So overall, there's a bunch of things to do in the Ave ecosystem, and there's a link in the show notes to get started with all of them. Yeah. My favorite, I would say both of our favorites, lending and borrowing protocol and crypto. They've been around since the very beginning. Ave is just fantastic. David, I know this episode was my idea. It's kind of like geeky, wonkish stuff, but I felt like it was so important, especially on the back of developers getting arrested in tornado cash. Like what is going on? I just realized one day I don't even understand what all of these are institutions and what gives the financial surveillance system their apparatus. What did you think of this episode? Yeah, I definitely would categorize this one as a Ryan episode. I was definitely in listening mode for the majority of this podcast. I mean, I guess that's what it's like to be a listener. You're in listening mode, so I guess telling listeners to enter listening mode, I guess doesn't help them. I learned a lot. It felt like story time, a little bit about American history. One of these episodes that we frequently do on Bankless every now and then about just like, hey, how did just the state of laws come to be in the way that they are and how are they downstream from the original American values that this country was founded on? What about the current settling of the dust around this new player in the world of, in this universe called cryptography? How is that disturbing the equilibrium and how do we need to extend American values into this new world? Because if we don't do that, then non -American values will take over. I think that's kind of the through line that I would, that will anchor Bankless listeners is that there's this new field in territory. We can have freedom enter and establish itself legally, or we can have authoritarian interests enter in that same field. And I mean, I think everyone knows which side that we want to win. We need to actually fight for that and fighting for that starts with understanding. And so I think that's why I enjoyed this episode is it helps tell that story. Yeah. And anytime David says American values, if you're outside the U S and you're like American values, just, just think of liberal values, like lowercase L values, right? Civil liberties you know, freedoms of citizens to, to express themselves and to transact without the surveillance of the government. That's really what we're talking here. And that's what's at stake more than anything. I think this episode impressed upon me that unchecked, this is just an octopus. This is just like a tree structure that will, I don't know, it's not an octopus slime mold. It will grow. Exactly. And, and it is growing and it has grown since like the 1970s. Anyway, absolutely fantastic episode guys. Stay tuned for this. But before we do, we want to tell you about our friends over at Kraken, which is our number one recommended exchange. Go check them out. Kraken pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices. Even when I'm not looking to place a trade on Kraken pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real time market data, and lightning fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs, pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen with Kraken pro. You have that power, whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro .kraken .com to get started today. Mantle formerly known as Bitdao is the first Dow led web three ecosystem, all built on top of mantle's first core product, the mantle network, a brand new high -performance Ethereum layer two built using the OP stack, but uses Eigen layers data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum layer one. Not only does this reduce mantle networks gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for mantle's applications. The mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the web free space for mantle. Mantle already has sub communities from around web three onboarded like game seven for web three gaming and by bit for TVL and liquidity and on -ramps. So if you want to build on the mantle network, mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone based funding to promising projects that help expand secure and decentralized mantle. If you want to get started working with the first Dow led layer two ecosystem, check out mantle at mantle .xyz and follow them on Twitter at zero X mantle. Arbitrum is accelerating the web three landscape with a suite of secure Ethereum scaling solutions. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum one with flourishing defy and NFT ecosystems. Arbitrum Nova is quickly becoming a web three gaming hub and social daps like Reddit are also calling Arbitrum home. And now Arbitrum Orbit allows you to use Arbitrum secure scaling technology to build your own layer three, giving you access to interoperable customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you are a developer, enterprise or user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar and fully EVM compatible, faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas fees. So visit arbitrum .io where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets and start building your first app with Arbitrum experience web three development the way it was always meant to be secure, fast, cheap and friction free. Bankless nation. We are super excited to host two legal minds on our show today. Seth Hurtline is the vice president global head of policy at ledger and Michael Moser. He's the building ex ante. Um, he's formerly been at FinCEN and the treasury chief technical council at T analysis. So he's seen a thing or two in the space. Uh, welcome Michael. Thanks. All right guys. Uh, so what we're going to attempt to do on today's episode is give kind of the everyman explanation of financial surveillance. I feel like this is an episode. Um, maybe for me, it's, it's kind of a selfish episode because I feel like here I am in crypto and I've heard all of these, you know, four or five letter agencies. Uh, and it's recently started to impact my life with like tornado cash. I'm not entirely sure what these agencies are. I'm not entirely sure what's legal and what's not. I'm not entirely sure what powers each of these agencies actually have over my financial life. And I'm looking for like the one Oh one, I'm looking for like the, the explainer when we call it, talk about fat if, uh, and we're talking about OFAC, we're talking about whitelists and gray lists and we're talking about, you know, can I use tornado cash or not? And I can't because I'm an American. I just don't know what, uh, what every like what's going on here. So I feel like we need the one Oh one episode. So if you guys are game to do that, that's what, uh, this we're going to try to accomplish today. So I'm good. Great. Absolutely. Well, let's, um, let's kind of start domestic, uh, from sort of the U S perspective if we will, and then, then go international to kind of the rest of the world. But I want to start with maybe a working definition. So I'm thinking of this episode as like a financial surveillance one Oh one episode. And I'm wondering if you guys could sort of describe financial surveillance when I use that term, what does it mean to you? What is kind of happening behind the scenes? Who are some of the main agencies that hold the power? I'll throw this one to you first, Seth. Okay. Um, well, I, you know, I think, you know, for the purposes of this episode, let's, uh, you know, sort of carve out, you know, private sector or sort of corporate surveillance. Um, uh, let's, let's sort of limit the scope of today's conversation to, uh, to government surveillance. But I, you know, I think the, uh, you know, a good working definition could be, um, you know, information that is, uh, collected by, uh, or, uh, required to be reported to, uh, the, uh, the federal government or an agency thereof, uh, either by individuals or, um, uh, by, by service providers, intermediaries, uh, that they use for, uh, their everyday financial lives. So just to check that definition, Seth, I hear hearing two parts. One is the legally mandated reporting requirements, which if you don't do it, you get like something like fines and jail. And then there's additional information, which it would seem that the powers that be are able to just collect by their own visual, uh, mechanisms as in like it's information that's out there and they collect that information because it's available for them to collect. So that's two types of data. I mean, you know, Mike, I'd be curious your, your thoughts on this. I think it sort of converges effectively into, uh, more or less the same thing. Um, so, so maybe not a need to draw that particular distinction. Um, yeah, I think, I think it's a, I think it's a collective approach. It sort of, um, I think for two reasons, one is, you know, some of that will come into play, David, as we're, as we think about challenges, including constitutional challenges, uh, as courts have, have made a distinction between, uh, when you put your trash out, um, have you relinquished control of it? And if somebody goes through it, they just go through that through it, um, versus, uh, somebody coming in your house and going through your papers, which is the sort of genesis of the fourth amendment. Um, and I think as Seth's pointing out, we're, we're in a space here with, with web one, two, and now three, where there's tremendous amount that's, that's in this gray area between what's public and what isn't. I think even, even the concept of like what's public information at this point, um, is, is a lot more of a fine tuned, uh, fine nuanced issue, uh, including, I should say, like in a way that, that also these same government agencies that are, that are collecting it for various reasons. I mean, the, the mission of all of this, uh, and I think this is important is something when, when I was at FinCEN, we would say to the people on the Hill, making the laws too, sometimes without asking us first, uh, was that the primary mission is countering exploitation here. And so you have to factor into that, that the fact that this information out there and being collected in any form is also subject to creating greater exploitation. Uh, and that, that includes people's, you know, honeypots of people's data that gets hacked. Um, some of this recently coming up in FTX and Kroll, um, coming out of the bankruptcy. Uh, and that's something that, that I think there's the policymakers and the politicians, and then there's also the, operators out there, including at FinCEN and DOJ are saying, actually we don't need more cases and more victims. Uh, so can we protect some of this too? It's partly why we brought in privacy experts and did initiatives on zero knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption at FinCEN. So I do think it's really important that we're, that we're talking about that very holistically. There's a lot out there. So already we're talking about FinCEN and DOJ and treasury and all these kinds of institutions. I want to get some working definitions on, but, but while we're, while we're talking about, um, this, this term, financial surveillance, all right, let's just get a grasp of what sort of data is generally being collected. And like, when is this primarily like, uh, intermediaries that are required to submit this? Because, um, as a, you know, a citizen of the US, I don't often have to, I guess I'm not like conscious of times that I'm like filing paperwork with treasury or FinCEN, but maybe I am through an intermediary and I, I just don't know it. So what sort of things are being tracked and, uh, surveilled and why? I'm happy to take that first. Yeah, I think, I mean, so it's true. You're not, although I will say there's, there's, uh, there's legislation out there, particularly in the tax space that could make you a reporter, Ryan, whether you like it or not, and whether everyone around you likes it or not. Uh, speaking of honeypots, like you may be collecting and reporting on others, but I think as, as in a traditional stand from the, from a FinCEN perspective in the Bank Secrecy Act, um, you're absolutely right. It would be intermediaries. Uh, and in fact, this goes back to some of the constitutional issues that, and the third party doctrine that Seth mentioned, but it's really transactional information. Um, and historically, in fact, the, we can talk through a little bit if you want the history of the Bank Secrecy Act, but it was exactly this. It was around, uh, reporting requirements basically, uh, coming up through the seventies. Um, and basically at the time it was purely, it was basically large cash. Um, law enforcement was seeing large cash deliveries to banks. I'm pretty sure it was organized crime. And when they would go to a bank, the bank would say, I don't know, I don't know why, um, Bugsy Siegel dropped off, $100 million. Uh, and so the other piece of that was that there was foreign Swiss banks, uh, at the time. And so this was the foreign transactions reporting piece of it too. Um, that had Swiss bank, Swiss secrecy, uh, Bank Secrecy, which is where the Bank Secrecy Act comes from. Um, and so the US would say, okay, well, we'll go to Switzerland where some of this money is getting sent from the bank that was brought in in cash. And they'd go to the Swiss and say, okay, you tell me about what's going on here. And they would say, there's nothing we can say. There's a secret, there's bank secrecy here. And so part of it was going to the US banks and saying, we need you to collect more information at the time. It was really just information of like, who's collecting it. Um, give me their, their, basically their, their bank opening information. Where do they live? What's their phone number? What's their, um, what's their occupation? What's their source of income, that sort of thing. It evolved over time to suspicious activity reports, which is much more, I think what, what you're thinking through, which is, okay, now a bank is making a determination. Seth came in the other day. He didn't just drop off a bunch of cash. He's, he's making anomalous, uh, deposits that don't make sense to us. Uh, this seems suspicious. He said he was, uh, he said he was a reporter, but he makes a million dollars a day. Um, what's going on here. And so they would file a suspicious activity report that would lay out, who is it? What did he say it came from? Um, and what is it that's suspicious about it? And I, and I should say like, you know, back in the day that would have been, he brought in a bag of cash, um, net, then it would evolve to checks and check numbers. Then it would evolve to trans, uh, wire transfers and the wire transfer information about every piece of that transaction who the correspondent bank was in the crypto space. That could be all sorts of things. What wallet address was connected? What time? Uh, if it's a, if it's a public ledger like Ethereum or Bitcoin, that might be, here's a graph of everything that that wallet touched, um, historically, uh, depending on what the platform is, they may collect the IP address, even the device identifier that Seth used to connect. Um, so there's a tremendous amount of data and metadata that could be collected in that. Can we, Michael, so can we go back to kind of the history here, uh, with you guys to make sure I understand it. So there wasn't, and we're still domestic, so we're still talking about the U S and we'll expand international after this. So, um, prior to like the 1970s, am I right to say there wasn't much financial surveillance? And then in the nine 1970s, is that, is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's correct. And then in the 1970s, basically to kind of fight crime, maybe organized crime, you know, the mafia was sort of one, uh, one organization that was in the cross hairs. Uh, the U S came out with a bank secrecy act and this started sort of the, the surveillance, financial uh, apparatus. And, and so this, is this the reason basically for AML KYC, which is like, I have to be identified before I can like, you know, with a government ID, let's say before I can open a bank account. And this is the reason when I go to like transfer money or take out a large deposit from my bank, uh, the bank teller will say, what are you doing with that? Like, how are you using that money to ask these questions? I'm always like, why, why do you need to know this? Uh, you know, and it's almost couched as if, well, we want to protect you from frauds and scams and you know, maybe that's part of it. It seems like more of it is, is, is kind of this financial surveillance apparatus. So that's why I have to present an ID. That is why they are asking questions like, what are you doing with the money? And can you tell me more about, uh, the source of the funds? These are all questions. I'm, I know many bankless listeners have, have seen from their banks and it all, all emanated from this legislation from the, the 1970s and the bank secrecy act is that, is this correct? Yeah. So it started, uh, bank secrecy act was enacted in 1970. Um, and you know, at, at that time it was, uh, you know, a much smaller version, uh, you know, than it is now. Uh, right. So in 1970 I had two, uh, two core provisions, title one, title two, title one basically said banks have to, um, record, uh, transactions of their customers. They have to keep an internal log of all the transactions their customers made. Title two said the banks have to report, uh, transactions over a certain size to the treasury department. And in 1970, that, that threshold was set at, at 10 ,000 us dollars. Um, and so that created, um, one of these forms that, uh, the reports get made on called a CTR or currency transaction report. Uh, importantly, the, uh, that threshold, that $10 ,000, uh, hasn't ever been adjusted. Right. So if you, if you go back and you adjust the CTR threshold, uh, back to, to 1970 dollars, it's the equivalent of about $79 ,000 today. Wow. And what that amounts, yeah. What amounts that amounts to is, uh, you know, a gradual but constant tightening of the noose of, uh, transaction reporting of, uh, you know, the American people. Uh, and, you know, and so that's where it started. Um, you know, but, you know, both as, as sort of Mike and, and Ryan, your, your, your comments alluded to, there's this sort of creeping nature of it where it all, it just expands. Right. So first it was just the CTRs and the record keeping, you know, now it's, uh, SARs or suspicious activity ports that were added in 1992. Um, there was a, a vast expansion of the scope of the types of transactions it just really quick SARS. So suspicious activities report, is that basically incumbent on sort of the bank teller or bank employee to be like, Hey, there's something fishy about this transaction and I'm going to report it up. Is that right? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Um, and, um, you know, so interesting stat on, on suspicious activity reports, um, somewhere North of 2 million SARS get filed with Vincent every year. Um, uh, you know, again, curious for your, for your insider take on this mic, but, uh, you know, testimony, uh, presented to Congress is that FinCEN reviews less than 1 % of the SARS that are actually filed. Um, and, you know, and, and there are, you know, way more CTRs filed than SARS filed. So, you know, most of this information goes into, uh, you know, basically just a government database and sits there waiting to be queried. Um, and, uh, you know, but so, uh, these things keep getting added on to the BSA, right? So it, it grows over time and there was a huge expansion in scope. BSA bank secrecy act. And so there was a big expansion in scope, um, as part of the Patriot act, uh, after nine 11, uh, that added a lot of new types of information that had to be gathered and reported and, uh, new intermediary types that are responsible for gathering and reporting that information.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1242. +100 Million Users Coming To Avalanche | AVAX Dominates Korea
"All right, so we're gonna jump into Avalanche today, a little bit about what is happening at Korea Blockchain Week and why this might make sense to you and why it's gonna be important to you as you start to look at really going into projects like Avalanche over the long term. We'll get into all this good stuff today. My name is Paul Berra. Welcome back into Tech Path. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, iTrust Capital, if you look into long term holdings, you want to invest in Bitcoin or Ethereum and you want to do it in a crypto IRA, you can do it with iTrust, very easy to do. You can also get into precious metals, gold, silver, all that good stuff. Very low fees on your actual trades, but no monthly fees. So that's the cool part. If you use our link below, you will get a $100 funding reward. So it's very easy. All you have to use is that link and it helps the channel out. Try it out and see what you guys think. Let me know in the comments too, because as I said, we always love to get feedback from people who are using some of our sponsor stuff. All right. Let's go into a few things here. I'll lead off here with Avalanche opening their, kind of their pop up at the event, which was happening in Seoul during the Korean Blockchain Week. And this was all happening right before, so don't think there was nobody there. It just is all right there before the event started. So, but the cool aspect of this is that it was Avalanche putting on a pretty dynamic event. Now I want to play a clip for you to go into a little bit about what the Korean Blockchain Chain Week is. Listen in. Is this what you expected? You're seeing today we have 2 ,000 registrants. And so that's way over capacity, which is a really good thing. The KBW energy is kind of transferring over to us. We're, I believe the second biggest event second to the conference this week. I can confirm that. We've been around. So I can definitely confirm that. Okay. I was like, I'm pretty sure we are, but I wasn't. No, this is totally sure. This is packed. I think culturally speaking Koreans, at least relative to the Western world, is a little bit more conservative. I think the community that we're seeing, especially in the States, isn't really the same type of community, not in any better or worse way by any means, but it's just different, right? And so the first two years was really like underdog story. No one believes in us. And then really trying to find our stride. So we're finding our stride a lot in enterprises, especially with AvaCloud. We also have gaming. It takes a lot of time to build a proper game. So we're going to see that come through probably the next few months or even next year or so. And then also NFTs as it relates to art. And so kind of all of this stuff converges into one Web3 unit. So that obviously was one of the Avalanche team kind of giving some explanation of the amount of growth that they've done in a fairly short period of time. Another thing that is happening is Avalanche's move into the institutional space. Here's a tweet by Anthony Scaramucci. Very impressed with Avalanche's team and customizable infrastructure. Not surprised it's catching on in the institutional community there. Great presentation from John Nahas, which we've had on the show before. If you guys want to check out some of our Avalanche videos, go back and check out John's video that we did. I think it was one of our most recent ones. But all this happening there at Korea Blockchain Week. And again, this market is one of those that is exploding in innovation. And the reason it's important is because as we look at the evolution of gaming and you look at how Web3 will take place, a lot of these hot centers like Korea and within the Pacific Rim are going to be some of the pretty much the leaders around the world. And I think Avalanche will of course play a big role in this. If you look at this piece right here, just kind of showcase a little bit about how long it takes projects to kind of get moving. But enterprise blockchain projects typically undergo four main stages in initial exploration. I would say most companies out there using it today are at that stage. Proof of concept and then pilot, trial and then in production. So you're talking about 25 months there. You can kind of see it right there on the right hand side of the slide there from the University of Cambridge. Point being is that this all takes time. However, we've had about 18 months of a bear market here where a lot of projects like Avalanche have been building. So on their Twitter account or X account, the momentum in Asia continues to as more subnet launches are cooking up. On Avalanche you've got a Japanese gourmet food app, Sarah, which brings two million active users. This is a pretty big app in Japan. Now you look at that market along with other ideas around where these markets are going and the kind of concepts that are starting to utilize things and projects like Avalanche, you're going to start to see more use cases come to light. And I think this is just a good example of one of them. Let's go over to another one, which is Panta. I've got a clip for this one. Listen in.
The Charlie Kirk Show
A highlight from The Fallacy of Limitations
"Lots of channels. Nothing to watch. Especially if you're searching for the truth. It's time to interrupt your regularly scheduled programs with something actually worth watching. Salem News Channel. Straightforward, unfiltered, with in -depth insight and analysis from the greatest collection of conservative minds. Like Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Sebastian Gorka, and more. Find truth. Watch 24 -7 on SNC .TV and on Local Now, Channel 525. Hey, everybody. What is the limiting belief of the conservative movement? We dive into that and reflect on a very candid episode here on The Charlie Kirk Show. Make sure you're subscribed and listen to the end of this episode for a special announcement. Also, email me your thoughts, as always, freedom at charliekirk .com. That's freedom at charliekirk .com. Subscribe to our podcast by opening up your podcast application and typing in Charlie Kirk Show. And get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa .com. That is tpusa .com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandtodd .com. I have the greatest job on the planet. I get fulfillment, purpose in what I do. Not only do I get three hours with you every single day, three podcasts a day, reaching millions of people, social media and podcasting. I also, of course, my continued and original passion is running Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action. At Turning Point USA, we have hundreds of full -time staffers working on high school and college campuses across the country, Turning Point Action. We are staffing up and staffing up 60 to 70 full -time people and getting even more. As you know, we have our ballot chasing operation. And as part of my duties as founder and CEO of Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, I have to raise a fair amount of money. And I don't mind it. You know, the Lord has blessed us significantly. I kind of cringe at times when people are too hard on this idea of donors. There are some amazing donors in the conservative movement. We are evidence of that at Turning Point USA. Donors that get it, donors that are based, donors that are driven, donors that are filled with faith and conviction. That's not a majority of all the quote unquote donors. There's plenty that don't get it. And on this program, we're able to deliver predictions, insight that I think other shows aren't because we're in the grassroots. I give hundreds of speeches a year. Tonight, we're doing an event with Riley Gaines at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona. This weekend, I'm giving a couple speeches in Lubbock, Texas at a church. So I talked to the grassroots. I talked to pastors. But I also have an interesting wrinkle as well that I think we're able to offer on this program that other programs aren't. I talked to the people in the high society, the Republican Party. Senators, consultants, chiefs of staff, and the more moderate wing of donors, if you will. So I get a 360 degree multidimensional view of the American right. I'm very blessed by that. And so I kind of have to weigh it, depending on what room I'm in. I just read the temperature. I always ask more questions than not because people know what I believe. If they ask me questions, I answer them. But let me just watch the show. So I'm always interested. I just kind of pepper with questions. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you doing? And it's so interesting. With some donors, again, we have some amazing donors at Turning Point. So I'm going to just put that off to the side. But some donors where I'm not... Let's just say they're not exactly simpatico with all of our views here on The Charlie Kirk Show, especially if they are not sympathetic for Trump, which is fine. I mean, I'm not here to say you have to love Trump. You have to understand what's happening. But there was one conversation recently that I want to fill you in on. That I think is something that is a big danger, and it's not isolated to just a particular person. I think it's all throughout the leadership of the Republican Party. And it was a conversation that I had recently with a moderate donor, and we get along well. And you hear me talk about these conversations frequently because I have them. I'm raising money all the time, trying to raise $100 million to go chase ballots in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia, the stuff the Republican establishment should be doing. Literally, when I'm done with this program, I go into my office, eat something quickly. I'm just working the phones, working the phones. Zoom call, phone call, zoom call, phone call, zoom call, phone call. I love it. It gives life purpose. But this one conversation recently, I think, accurately depicts one of the issues facing the American right. And I call it the fallacy of limits. What is a limiting belief? A limiting belief is a story that you tell yourself. We all have limiting beliefs. And if you're honest with yourselves, when you pray, when you meditate, when you reflect, when you ruminate, you identify your limiting belief and you try to challenge it. A limiting belief holds you back. And it holds you back from becoming who or what you are meant to be. These beliefs limit us from reaching our fullest potential. They're often subconscious, by the way. They're very rarely identified in your normal thought pattern or in your words. But when you find them, you're like, wow, I was living under the tyranny of a limiting belief. I was also not as free, happy, joyful as I possibly could have been. We don't even know that until somebody points them out to us. Typically, limiting beliefs are identified externally. A friend, a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, a parent, a spouse, they say, you realize that your limiting belief is I don't have time to work out. Or my limiting belief is I can never lose weight. Or my limiting belief is X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z. Now, Tony Robbins talks about this a lot. Tony Robbins writes about this. He's not a political guy. He's one of the most influential authors and speakers. I've benefited a lot from his teachings. Maybe you like him, maybe you don't. The point is he talks a lot about limiting beliefs. I think he's right on. What is the limiting belief or the fallacy of limits in the high society of the American right? I'm hearing it more and more and more. And it goes something like this. Oh, the left, they're going to back off soon. They've overreached, and they're going to back off. That the left is going to realize that they've gone too far, that they're too radical, that they're too fringe, and they're just going to kind of go backwards. Now, the more I hear this, and we've touched on this before, it's very important. You have to understand that many of these people saying this are in their 70s and 80s. Obviously, nothing wrong with that. But they remember a country that is dead, and it's very hard for them to reconfigure, to reanalyze, reorient that they're in a different atmosphere than the one they grew up in. I sympathize with that. I really do. I'm 29 years old, and the country I grew up in is completely different. Completely different. Our federal government now says men give birth, we don't have a border. I mean, the stuff that we now accept as normal was considered radical, unthinkable, a laugh or a joke when I was in fifth or sixth grade. So it's even worse if you're 70 or 80 years old. You're looking around and you say, what on earth is going on? However, the limiting belief that still exists is not just that, oh, the country is going to solve itself, it's that there's some sort of autocorrect mechanism built in to the American people. That's what I hear a lot. It's like, oh, Charlie, never underestimate the American people's ability to self -correct. What are we, like an autonomous vehicle? What kind of crazy fallacy is that, that we're just going to kind of automatically reorient back to where we need to be? No, it takes effort. That's an act of the will. It needs to be deliberate. It needs to be intentional. You have to be persuasive. That just doesn't happen by some sort of magical force of the natural law.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from Solana To $8? (Mass Liquidation Event Coming) *What I'm Doing*
"Solana is breaking down past a critical horizontal support level at the moment as you can see on the screen in front of you But things could get much much worse with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Solana set to be liquidated By FTX to repay its creditors. So in today's video I want to discuss what the hell is going on with Solana How far down could the token go and is Solana a buy? What is my plan in terms of accumulating Solana? What's my plan in terms of trading Solana? Are there short setups that we can start looking at? I want to get through all of that and more in today's video without further ado. Let's get into it So the first I guess elephant in the room is this FTX liquidation theory that a bunch of Solana is about to be dumped onto The market now, this isn't just exclusive to Solana I think the market in general does have a fair amount of supply overhang at the moment We know bitcoin has the US government silk road bitcoin set to be liquidated We know the mount gox bitcoin are set to be distributed But I want to focus on point number three that you can see in front of you here And this is the altcoin position that FTX has that they are going to need to liquidate in order to repay creditors As you can see in front of you at the time of this filing. Um, they had 685 million dollars worth of Solana 500 million of ftt 268 million worth of bitcoin these numbers obviously slightly down because the filing happened earlier in the year But we do know they hold a significant amount of Solana and that is because Alameda who were heavily intertwined with FTX were one of the major market makers and VC backers behind Solana So that is exactly why during the FTX saga Solana performed so badly as you can see Dipping all the way down to eight dollars. Could we see that eight dollar level again? Well, let's get into some of the data that we're seeing at the moment. Why is this potential liquidation problematic in this market? Well, I think the main reason is because we are seeing a reduction in total trading volume We could see a compression in the amount of trading that's taking place across all centralized exchanges and DEX's Inclusive which generally means that there is less volume in the market So any sort of sell pressure that comes onto the market during a period of low Volatility and low volume tends to impact price more than it would during a period of high trading volume And that the same could be said from the long scenario like if there is a Major catalyst that comes into the market at the moment that can see prices skyrocket a lot quicker Than it would during a period like the bull run where you know You're getting a lot of trading happening all the time. You're getting shorts and also longs piling up against each other This market is relatively liquid. It's relatively low volume and I guess undoubtedly there is a supply overhang for the entire market Um, but Sol specifically which we're going to talk about in today's video. So what does that overhang look like for Solana? Well, we can see the FTX wallets in front of us We can see that they have a significant amount of Solana that's on the move Um, they have 200 million in in Solana in one of these wallets And we know that those wallets have been transferring funds around they haven't sold any yet But the speculation over the past couple days was okay. These wallets are starting to wake up They're starting to transfer Sol. Should we be bracing for a potential liquidation event with FTX being forced To sell their Solana now this whole forced selling notion comes from the fact that Galaxy Is essentially the company that's been tasked with the role of liquidating FTX funds to pay back creditors so someone basically Needs to handle the entire liquidation process to make sure tokens are sold off in a fair and safe manner And also takes into account the best interest of the stakeholders now the obvious stakeholders in this scenario Are the creditors the the traders of the platform the investors of the platform That have been hard done by that need to be paid back some sort of amount we can see that FTX has uh Decided that it wants to start selling because they have engaged Mike Novogratz's Galaxy as an advisor to help with these sales According to court filings made on Wednesday FTX which collapsed in November last year wants to return funds to creditors in fiat currency This is very interesting because if they were to return in tokens They could essentially take like let's say the number of Solana tokens and divide it Um and distribute it out to the amount of creditors owed Solana, but instead they're choosing to liquidate all of their positions So this involves dumping altcoins and bitcoin and ethereum onto the market to get uh, fiat Recruitment so they can distribute the fiat currency to creditors. That is an interesting distinction to note here I think that's why the market's panicked now that the amount that they can sell is actually capped at a weekly amount We can see that the weekly limit shall be 50 million for the week through Friday in which the order is entered This is the official court filing 100 million for each subsequent calendar week Provided that the debtors may temporarily increase the weekly limit to 200 million for a period of one calendar week So it can go up to 200 million. It starts at 50 and then goes to 100 million This is to stop the suppressatory or potentially dangerous effects that it could have on price Especially when it comes to more illiquid markets like the altcoin market and as I discussed before Solana Is a major contributor here. In fact, I was covering the graph before but you can see 685 million worth of Solana it's actually worth closer to 600 now now in response to the news and also the the news that The ftx decided to unstake some of its sole position to put onto the market Anatoli the founder and ceo of Solana came out and tagged actually adam cochran Of all people in a tweet saying if you have any influence with the ftx estate My wish would be to distribute the soul to the ftx customers directly probably the least worst outcome for everyone This is going against the notion that I discussed before of ftx liquidating into fiat currency to then distribute Fiat the creditors This is kind of a weird sign and it I guess was a bit of a warning sign a bit of a red flag To see the founder of Solana come out and kind of urge them Um to distribute Solana because clearly this means to some extent he's slightly worried about the potential effects on the market I think this was a little weird and that's the reason why the market did not react too. Well to the news So look, what is the tldr from all this liquidation stuff? We know that Solana is coming onto the market and I think in a typical environment. It would be okay I would just kind of dismiss it as a nothing burger. But given the fact that the market is pretty boring There's not much volatility I think the effect that this Solana coming onto the market could have Is marginally greater than it typically would be and for that reason I must urge investors to have caution here Solana did not react to this news too Well, like typically what we see in these scenarios is the market sometimes react with strength because once news starts to hit the market You know We see this buy the rumor sell the news effect where price starts to react in the opposite direction of what the market Anticipates in the case of sol we didn't actually see that we have seen the price continue to bleed from the 22 region Wasn't a huge show of strength for Solana, but you can't really blame it So when I look at the technicals of Solana What are the major levels that we have to keep in mind here and what are some of the Interesting like levels that I would be interested in jumping in as an investor or a buyer So I really just wanted to find the range structure that Solana's in right now You have the first range low, which is the range low that was set during the ftx collapse back in november 2022 And this sits at 11 You have deviation below this level and I would consider this deviation because we didn't have a weekly close below this level And that is at eight dollars, so that is your ultimate low, but the range low Truthfully considering we had more touches of this level and it was a more critical pivot point still stands at around 10 to 11 You also have range high so establishing a range. We need to have range low range high the range high right now Once again disregarding deviation where we didn't get a substantive close above that level is currently sitting at 26 .79 You have this range between 11 and 27 Now within the range there are some critical levels that we must pay attention to The first mid -range level is currently the level that we're hovering around and recently kind of have been reacting off This is the 20 level to be specific. It's 1980 a key psychological level for investors We were under this just before while I was recording we pumped above but we are kind of just chopping around this level right now This is a very key level you start to close on the daily below this level And then 16 becomes a real possibility which is your next mid -range level So i'm looking at this in like quartiles or um kind of different structures, I guess from range low to range high Technically technically this is thirds. You've got your first third. You've got your second third You've got your third third and essentially right now We are hovering between the third section and the second section of the range structure at the moment now Where would I step in as a buyer? Well, look if you believe in salana long term and i'm going to get into some of the fundamental research Into my thoughts on salana after I talk about price Um, it doesn't really matter where you buy I guess if you have a really long -term like mindset on this you might just opt for just dcing slowly over time me However, I try to be a little more selective I know we're going into what could be a difficult period for crypto and for that reason There are some levels that stand out to me The major level of is of course range low at eleven dollars if we do somehow get there And then you have this other key level which interests me probably even more than the level at the moment Considering it looks shaky whether or not salana will hold and that's the 16 level 15 to 16 Does interest me and then 11 also interests me but now I want to talk about the reasons why it interests me because There is a reason why I will step in it As a buyer at a certain point and there's a reason why I do want to hold salana for next cycle and it's a thesis that i've been developing over the last, you know few months and I mean as an extension of that really years that I want to discuss with you right now and talk about some of the fundamental drivers behind why I actually believe in salana and Why I think that any huge liquidation event for me would be an opportunity to add more to my portfolio now Remember there are short opportunities here if salana starts to react badly and you know starts to close Um below this mid -range level here. You may have an opportunity to go short to 16 I'm, not a huge like altcoin scalper or trader I don't really take trade setups in the middle of the range are more of a trader that prefers to trade the extremities So it would be up towards 26 and down towards 11 If you want to trade mid -range and you're comfortable taking kind of a swing trade at the 19 level Let's say you wanted to short You can actually take that trade, but it really depends on your time horizon here And if you don't want to trade, of course, you can use a decentralized exchange like gains network Which is an amazing place to trade if you want to trade on a decentralized exchange where you have custody over your own assets Of course, there's many benefits like execution efficiency, etc. But yeah gains is awesome They've got a bunch of trading pairs You might notice it looks a little different and that's because they did a revamp of their ui So they switched some things around to make it easier and more intuitive for the user And yeah, as you can see in front of you if you were trading salana This is what it would look like. You would set your order on the left choose your leverage You can go short you can go long you can set limit orders Um all that sort of stuff as well And you can choose your stop loss and take profit which is so important in crypto to always implement risk management So there's a link in the description To gains network if you want to trade salana, but now I want to go into more of a long -term fundamental approach to Why I actually want to accumulate if salana gets much lower here and look if salana starts to rebound nicely Which I don't think it will by the way just due to the headwinds that we previously discussed But if it somehow does decide to rebound nicely i'd also look in jumping in a bit higher But getting in during a choppy period while it's in the mid -range while you have these liquidation fears about tokens being dumped It's often a risky proposition. So yeah, let's get into my salana thesis The first thing I want to say about salana is that it's an interesting proposition for my portfolio personally Because I think like a lot of people my portfolio is quite like eth heavy It's eth dominant and with layer twos gaining so much steam as this kind of eth thesis proliferates Throughout the market. I think it's nice actually to have a slight hedge that's non -evm So salana for me represents a nice non -evm bet to hedge against my ethereum positions And ethereum dominance like imagine a scenario where there's some huge like roadblock with the evm Let's say an upgrade messes up ethereum or or eip 4844 something goes wrong Like we don't think these things will happen But sometimes they do in crypto if something goes wrong that fudsy ethereum ecosystem That could be a direct catalyst for some of the hedges some of the non -eth specific ecosystems now Even if nothing goes wrong on the eth side and i'm not anticipating anything goes wrong It does represent a unique bet on an extremely high throughput chain which can handle trading volume and Transaction volume of magnitude higher than eth and even the l2 counterparts can because even l2s Although they sound like amazing scaling solutions at the end of the day They're limited they're hard capped to geth and they're hard capped to the consensus of the ethereum ecosystem Even phantom as its own network due to the fact it was built on evm Is having to switch out evm for its own proprietary consensus Which is fvm so they can get rid of that geth cap that eth is currently capping them on And a lot of l2s do have this issue and for that reason if you're looking to build like a highly scalable fast game or or you want to Implement a payments rail or something where you need speed and you want to adopt a lot of users There's not that many l1s in the market that you don't have that many options You've got maybe like near protocol apt or sui but salana does stick out because it's got an amazing developer ecosystem We know how passionate the community are It's just like a pretty nice bonafide bet on a monolithic non -evml one And for that reason it adds a bit of nice diversification into my portfolio.
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from BNB Starter Pack (Biggest Coin In Crypto?)
"What happens when you combine binary and finance? Well, you get Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. And say you want to invest in this behemoth native token, BNB, where you're a little confused by all the name changes and rebrands. Don't worry. I'm going to break it down all for you. This is your BNB starter pack. Let's get it. Binance was founded back in July 2017 by Shengping Zhao, who goes by CZ and co -founder Heiyi. Now, CZ acts as CEO and the face of the company, while Heiyi works as the chief marketing officer. And right around the same time, the team ICOed their native token Binance Coin, also known as BNB. For those who don't know, ICO means Initial Coin Offering and acts very similarly to an IPO in traditional finance. 2022 might have been a boring bear market, but it was an exciting time for the Binance rebranding team because they changed their name behind BNB from Binance Coin to Build & Build in an attempt to disassociate from the centralized Binance exchange from the supposedly decentralized BNB landscape. BNB has a total supply of $200 million, and during the ICO, the Binance team received 40 % of $80 million BNB, with 20 % of that vested per year so they couldn't dump on holders. Angel investors received 10%, which was $20 million BNB, and the public sale included 50%, 100 million BNB. They started the price at 15 cents and raised about $15 million, 35 % of which they put towards their platform and exchange upgrades, 50 % of which they use for brand marketing and innovation, and 15 % was reserved for emergencies. At the height of the bull run, the price skyrocketed to just over $686, with a market cap of over $100 billion. Now, the total supply of BNB started out as $202 million. However, 20 % of profits are used to buy back BNB and burn it every quarter, creating a deflationary effect. In 2017, the team committed to destroy half the total supply over time. That's 100 billion BNB that will be poof, gone. At the time of recording, we just had the 24th BNB burn, and so far over 48 million BNB had been burned, leaving 153 million circulating supply. Previously, burns were calculated based on BNB trading volume on the Binance exchange, but in December 2021, the team implemented BNB AutoBurn. BNB AutoBurn uses the BNB price as well as the blocks generated on the BNB chain each quarter to determine how many coins should be burned. It also allows users to burn lost tokens and be reimbursed by the BNB Pioneer program. The Bruno hard fork also came with the ability to burn a portion of gas fees on the BNB chain. Now, all of this sounds great and deflationary, right? Well, yes, in theory, it's a great way to maintain and pump the price, but there are a few downsides to token burns. Sometimes it can create a supply squeeze, greater transaction costs, and even make a token more centralized. But Binance seems to be aware of the centralization concerns, and to date has invested more than a billion dollars in the BNB ecosystem in hopes of alleviating those concerns. Now, let's talk a little bit about that BNB ecosystem, shall we? Binance is now referring to the entire world of BNB as the BNB chain. Think of it as a lovely umbrella for lots of cool projects. Probably not Umbrella Corp, though. The OG member of BNB chain is now called BNB Beacon Chain, previously known as Binance Chain. This chain was created in April 2019 and supported the Binance DEX, which is the decentralized exchange, which created a better user experience to other exchanges that tended to be a bit slow and clunky. It uses Golang programming language and a peer -to -peer consensus mechanism where validators maintain all the data and validate all the transactions. They also vote to produce blocks, collecting and distributing fees amongst themselves. It's BNB's version of Bitcoin or Ethereum's miners. The block size holds up to one megabyte and the blocks are created in a few seconds, holding up to several thousand transactions. BNB Beacon Chain uses a BEP -2 token standard, unlike its sister chain, BNB Smart Chain, previously known as Binance Smart Chain, which uses a BEP -20 token. We'll talk more about BNB Smart Chain in a bit. Funnily enough, BNB started out as an ERC -20 token, but when the team launched the BNB chain in 2019, they converted the token to BEP -2. Like we said, BNB loves a rebrand even more than Elon Musk. Throw your ex up. So if you've ever been confused about which token to use or how to send your BNB for trading, you're not alone. In a project that prides itself on user -friendly speed and low fees, the various token standards are the trickiest part for new users. There's BEP -2, BEP -20 and even a BEP -8 token protocol, which is designed to launch projects at a lower cost on the mini token trading page on the Binance DEX. BEP -2 is only used for BNB chain governance, staking and voting. Holders get one vote per 50 BNB average daily holdings. It can also be traded and used for transaction fees on the Binance DEX, which runs on the BNB Beacon Chain. Be careful if you're new to trading BNB. If you're using the BEP -2 token, you won't be able to transfer your BNB to Ethereum -based wallets like MetaMask. If you try, you will lose your tokens and I'll be really sad for you. I may even cry. But one thing I'm not crying about is Stake sponsoring this video. Special thanks to them. The BEP -2 token addresses typically have BNB at the beginning versus the BEP -20 token wall addresses that start with 0x like Ethereum. There are a lot of videos that go more in depth about how to convert your BNB back and forth between BEP -2 and BEP -20 token standards, but I won't go into depth here. Like I said, just be careful. So now, let's chat about the chain that uses BEP -20 token, BNB Smart Chain. BNB Beacon Chain didn't support smart contracts, and updating it would have bogged down the network, so the team created a whole new chain, BNB Smart Chain. Binance forked Ethereum code, making it faster and cheaper. If you don't know what forking is, it's the definition of imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Basically, it means duplicating someone else's code and making some minor tweaks. Forking ETH's code made it easy for developers to move projects over to BNB Smart Chain without doing a whole lot of work. BNB Smart Chain also uses Solidity, which is the most widely used programming language for Ethereum. BNB Smart Chain allows for cross -chain asset transfers, smart contracts and EVM compatibility, which is the Ethereum virtual machine, all the while maintaining transaction fees significantly lower than Ethereum, typically less than $1. It felt like a prayer had been answered back when Ethereum fees had gone through the roof. However, because the transactions were so low and it was pretty cheap to create new tokens, it became really easy for scammers and rug pullers to create new projects with zero accountability. Other cool functions of BNB include their own cashback debit card, paying for travel on certain websites and using it across crypto land to buy virtual land or play games. Since July 2022, the average block size for BNB Smart Chain has ranged from about 50 ,000 to 26 ,000 bytes with a typical speed of a bit over 3 seconds, which spikes sometimes during heavy activity. It has a different consistency mechanism for the BNB Beacon Chain using proof of staked authority. Participants stake their BNB to become validators, and when they propose a block, they receive a transaction fee. BNB Smart Chain recently increased their validator limit from 21 to 41, which seems like an attempt at further decentralization. You need 10 ,000 BNB to become a validator, but regular users can become part of this process by choosing a validator with which to stake their BNB, and then they receive part of the rewards. The consensus method is fast, cheap and uses less energy than a proof of work model. A couple other interesting projects under the BNB Chain umbrella include Binance Launchpad and BNB Greenfield, which was launched in 2023. Launchpad is an ICO platform that allows BNB holders to get early access to new projects, and the BNB Greenfield is not actually a green field. It's a decentralized data storage system where data is stored across several computers or nodes. Large amounts of data can be stored off -chain without a centralized entity like Google or Apple Cloud. This increases security since it's harder for hackers to handicap, increases user control, freedom and privacy, and can facilitate data transfer to BNB Smart Chain to interact with decentralized apps. BNB has created such a robust ecosystem that is separate from parent company Binance that it continues to grow despite the lawsuit launched against Binance by the SEC in June of this year. Since then, BNB Smart Chain has pushed forward, releasing OP BNB, a layer 2 testnet powered by Optimism, and then in July of this year, BNB Beacon Chain completed its Zhang Hang hard fork, which added even more security to the network. The BNB Chain is growing so quickly that you will need to keep up to date on all the news if you want to invest in this project. Take this starter pack and run. Thanks for watching. Hit the like button and subscribe to the channel for more crypto news and education. DZ out.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"For the first time ever we are role playing. Hey there i'm kevin daisy and i'm eric olson. Join us on our journey to building one hundred million dollar companies. What's up everybody. This is kevin daisy. So i've been consumed. Sales all in sales sales means every day with the sales team for both my company's rival digital and regime. So it's been going very well. Were about a month and a half two months into this and we're just really starting to role play and we've done a little bit here and there but i'm gonna start enforcing it more to say. Hey most of our day will be spent or most of our morning. Meeting will be spent role playing. And it's only a thirty minute meeting so there's not a lot of time anyway and we about six of us in that meeting but role playing while hard and uncomfortable it helps and it has helped us because every time we do it we go back to our notes. We adjust what we're going to say our scripts were our approach was gonna work things like that. So it's really getting comfortable with it i think. Is you know that next. Step where you know. I'll have one of my guys say yeah a little. I got some anxiety or i talked too fast. But it's only because we're role plane. It's only because you guys are watching me. And i think really the day that we everyone can say. Hey i don't care. It's not a big deal because i do this every morning. Imagine how easy it is to call a prospect. That's not watching you. Or has a whole. You know five of the people watching you do it. It should be easy so we're going to continue to role play am really what we're doing this role playing a a phone call situation where we would call say a law firm an invite the on the podcast or we might just be pitching them on our services so whatever they be. It is uncomfortable to do this in front of a bunch of people but eventually just like everything else. It becomes natural and easy. So we're going to keep doing it until it's not uncomfortable and everyone can just do it so i think about roleplaying on if you play in your company but it's something that most people shy away from and we always come with excuses not to do it and just talk about strategy and process and and reasons why we we shouldn't role play yet because we haven't really fine tuned process where are our scripts and that'll just beat you up so just start calling this call your guy on the other side of the phone or the screen and just say hey. This is kevin. I'm calling you for blah blah blah blah and. Then they're going to give you feedback on how you did their throw you hard questions. Just like a client or a prospect may do and you're going to go. I didn't have a good response for that. And then now you write that down and you practice it again and now you have a responses for everything so roleplaying is huge is going to be a big part of our sales training. One ford and just keep the pedal moore continue to grow so roleplaying. Make sure you're doing that in your organization. Hey there eric j olson. I wanted to let you know about my book million dollar journey how to watch a seven figure business. This is the story of what it took for me to go from freelancer with no clients. No employees no revenue to growing a million dollar business. It took me eight years. And i made a lot of mistakes and all of those mistakes and more importantly lessons learned are in this book and we have chapter takeaways five to fifteen takeaways and you could.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"What's happening. It's eric j olson. If you're like me you try to cram in so much into one day but also if you're like me you probably often come up short. It's one of these things that you know. I like the for every lesson that i've learned. I've made the mistake in many many times. I'm not like most people unfortunately where they make a mistake once and then they don't make it again. I i usually make the same mistake over every end until i realized i needed to do something about this. But i'm still making this state to be honest with you. I will load up my calendar with meeting after meeting after meeting. And i even tried to account for things like the time it takes to drive from one place to another but i also have a task list in sauna that the company signs me and i also have my own personal task list of things that i know. I need to accomplish whether they're asana or calendar or not and so there's really three different sources of tasking for me and you know what i tried to drug little but often what happens is one task. You know ashes. Some tasks just won't get done and they roll over to the next day so like i try to cram all this stuff in and the reason is i'm trying to get as much done as possible and be a productive as possible especially monday through friday focused on work. But it's a challenge. And so what. I'm really trying to look into and starting to look into and wondering what maybe you do is how do you balance the need to get a lot of things. Done meetings conversations tasking calendar. How do you balance that with actually being able to determine how much you really can't get done and you know for me. It's it's also a challenge. Because i i don't know if i want to settle with well i should only be able to get done with seventy percent of what i put on task was therefore i'm just going to bring my sanders down from one. Hundred percents seven percents. So it's a real question. Fernandes israel dilemma. And i'm wondering how you handle it. How do you cram all these things into a day. Hit me up on social media. I'm at i m eric. J olson that. I am an e. r. i k. j. o. l. s. o. n. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Hey there eric j olson. I wanted to let you know about my book. Million dollar journey how to launch a seven figure business. This is the story of what it took for me to go from freelancer with no clients. No employees no revenue to growing a million dollar business. It took me eight years. And i made a lot of mistakes and all of those mistakes and more importantly lessons learned are in this book and we have chapter takeaways five to fifteen takeaways and you.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"I'm eric olsen and i'm days join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollars company what's happening. It's eric j olson. We are doing something a little bit new with the journey to one hundred million dollars and that is interviewing other entrepreneurs live on social media. So we're going to be doing this every couple of days. Really kevin's going to interview people to interview people. And then we're going to take a snippet from those longer interviews. They'll be about maybe twenty minutes along and we'll take the stip pertains really well to the podcast and will make an national podcast episode out of that. As an example. I just got done was speaking with an entrepreneur who i met through the entrepreneurs organization is name. Is chris hohn attempt to pronounce his last thing because he's polish and there's a lot of weird combinations of letters in there that i'm not used to saying but he runs a mobile application company in poland and he had a lot of really good things to say about building up his company which built from five people three years ago to fifty people today and for him. It's really about the people surprise. Surprise right we keep hearing despite the people and he has some stories about where he hired someone and they were doing some things that they shouldn't be doing and you didn't get rid of them quite quick enough but there's a silver lining now. I don't wanna ruin the story. So we're going to cut to a snippet of the episode right now. Check it out most common. Do they really committed. And i think all are connected to hiring people and not firing them enough so all the stories. I actually have are connected to that. Iheart a manager who. I really put big hopes in a person i know was a drug addict but i didn't know so the person was really having ups and downs or i hire another guy who was really ambitious and ambitious to the point that he was sitting some of the clients and giving it until he's other company so these were the big mistakes made quite recently like at the beginning of this company. Of course you have three months to fire people usually before things are getting really wrong and the funny history about this. This is actually happening. The other guy who was like stealing clients was that i went my boss head of supervisory board. That's guy who is like chief economist. For dpw see like super important guy. He's teaches the At center ice say okay. What should we do this guy. I think we should. We should fire him so he's not really. Let's give him a chance this one month after month. This guy is still doing this even after we had a talk. And i come again to this my supervisor and say to him We should really fire him a month ago and says no. No problem is very good because we quite cheaply learned a lot. And there's i think a good approach always when you make a mistake. Think about the to without having a huge expense otherwise that you've bankrupt companies really failing everything in your life but this is quite rare situation. Usually you can really fix it and you draw some conclusions and you learn so actually i think doing business in being an interpreter is actually like bumping from one mistake to another and once you bumped from those mistakes. gets larger but on the other hand. You know how to avoid those bumps more more and in particular. You had a manager who was effectively stealing from it he would take your sounds like your leads and then he would send them elsewhere to a company that he was involved in or owned or something like that and you took care of it in the end but what would you do different like now to try to avoid that situation. I think one of the main features of a good manager is the ability to listen because often as we think about leaders as a person who really goes on the some kind of tribute and says a motivational speech. That bruce everyone's mind. But what i observe of the leaders are people who are actually quite shy may be quite timid than and they're not so much off talkers. They're pretty good listeners. And throwing from this. I tried to be more listening during the conversation. So once we have management for instance are an important meetings. I'm tried to listen as long as possible and usually even give some last thoughts at the end of the discussion note to involved because naturally once we are a leader usually Everyone will listen to you. And it's very easy to draw fast conclusion so my personal mode for older meetings and being a good manager and avoid mistake. Mistakes is to actually listen very carefully. Hey there eric j olson. I wanted to let you know about my book. Million dollar journey. How to launch a seven figure business. This is the story of what it took for me to go from freelancer with no clients. No employees no revenue to growing a million dollar business. It took me eight years. And i made a lot of mistakes and all of those mistakes and more importantly lessons learned are in this book and we have chapter takeaways five to fifteen takeaways and you could.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Hey there i'm eric olsen and i'm heaven days join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollar company. What's happening is eric j olson. I have worked for big companies. And i have worked for small companies and hands down no doubt about it. I prefer to work with small companies in in a small now. All that said. I'm actually trying to build a very big company here at a rate digital so my goal is to build a one hundred million dollars per year digital marketing powerhouse. And that's a big company. But i am going to come hell or high water. Make sure that this place does not turn into a bureaucracy and bureaucratic. Corporate games are not played here. I've seen so many things happen in corporate america as far as people passing the buck. It just drives me nuts. And i've been there and i've played these games and a lot of times people. Just don't want to own up to what it is that they need to commit to do. And here's an example of that. This is the phrase that i've used in the past in corporate america. This is a phrase that i've heard many times in corporate america. If someone's like complaining to you about something and you to kind of deflect to someone else here's what you'll say. I'll work with so and so to get that result or all work without department to get that fixed all you're doing is you're deflecting right so even though you're getting a complaint you're not saying i'll take care of it now you're saying i'll work with them basically to get their shit fixed and it's a pure deflation and when all the lie about my last job they were become very corporate and every time that i heard that all work with so and so to get that address every time i heard that what i started to interpret was sort of hearing all work with so and so to get that fixed what i heard in my mind was i ain't doing shit about that so and by the way when i use that phrase in the past that's what i meant i'll say oh yeah i'll work with susan to get that fix would are really meant was stop bitching me about that. Go talk to suzie. And i ain't gonna fix it. I'm not gonna talk to suzie. It's a terrible thing. I hated the corporate game. When i realized that i was playing that corporate game it just drove me nuts. And i'm like i kind of get outta here. I can't do this anymore. This is not the life that i wanna live. Thankfully i've actually heard that here to ray digital. But whenever i start to kind of like sniff out corporate talk bureaucratic talk. I try to stomp it out immediately because it. It's just terrible. It is not the kind of culture that you want. You want people to be accountable. You want people to raise your hand and say i screwed that up and his own to fix it. You want people to take control of the situation and acknowledged and be transparent when there's a problem and so i'm not i'll never say anymore Our season it. The i'll say it's my fault and only sure taking care of you can come to me. You hold me accountable. Not susie right so i think that's really a valuable thing to have in the business. World is being transparent and being accountable. So these corporate games that you see played in corporate america these bureaucratic games. If you know you're participating them to stop like no one respects it. No one wants. That game played them. And you don't hopefully you don't like playing a game either. Stop or get out but these bureaucratic corporate america games. Now there's there's no places out here and if you have a small business. I would strongly encourage you to stamp that out as well. Hey there eric. J olson a wanted to let you know about my book million dollar journey how to watch a seven figure business. This is the story of what it took for me to go from freelancer with no clients. No employs no revenue to growing a million dollar business. It took me eight years. And i made a lot of mistakes and all those mistakes and more importantly lessons learned are in this book and we have chapter takeaways five to fifteen takeaways and you could.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"This is why we've been asking for job candidates to submit video. Hey there i'm kevin spacey and i'm erickson join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollar companies. What's up everybody. This is kevin so we have been asking candidates for different positions here to submit a video in the process before they do the interview and so we have a pretty rigorous process anyway but we added the step really because we get a lot of submissions in the hundreds of submissions. In a really short amount of time and we needed a way to kind of cut through the noise and find the best candidates now. I saw a post about this on lincoln. And there's definitely some controversy where people think this is completely wrong. You should never ask for someone to send you something like this. There's all kinds of issues in some people might not have equipment to record with in. You know it's not a fair kind of thing and while that may be in some cases we're not looking for a high quality video that's produced in a studio or with high level queant especially for sales. When i'm looking for is that for one they can actually do the step. So if i say hey send me a resume and they go no. I'm not gonna do that. You're not a fit. You're not gonna ever gonna get the next step if they don't take the step to send the video then they're not going to make it the next step and so i don't even wanna talk to anyone that can't take the step. I'm not looking for the best quality video. They can do on their cell phone in his senate. What we're looking for is that they have actually done some due diligence and we ask them just to say hey. Why would you like to work for our company so an audible apply right. They just hit submit. Sim it and they don't even know anything about the position. They're just trying to apply for as much as they can and so that weeds a lot of people out because when they get their request back that says hey we appreciate you applying if you would please send us a short video. Tell him why you wanna work for our company and so again if you're not interested in doing that then i'm not interested in hiring you so that's the only reason i need so there's a couple of different things. In addition to that one is a test number two. How creative are you. What's your personality like. Can you use the technology. We're in sales in a very digital world in a virtual world so we use videos like i have right now. I'm recording video while i'm doing this. Podcast we use videos all the time. for sales. We use yard or loom where we can send a prospect video. I'm expecting my sales team to be able to get on your short video and send those out the prospects if you can't do that for us a job then you're not going to be a good fit. So what are your thoughts on henderson video before you get to the next step in a process. We think it's been working very well and really the ones that stand out the ones that send the video. They're very creative. We get to see kind of the personality emission their cultural fit as well a resume. You can put anything on a resume and get to the third step in realized they don't really have the skill and they're not a fit culturally so this leads a lot of people out but i think that's for good purpose good reason. Hey there eric j olson. I wanted to let you know about my book. Million dollar journey. How to launch a seven figure business. This is the story of what it took for me to go from freelancer. No clients no employees no revenue to growing a million dollar business. It took me eight years. And i made a lot of mistakes and all of those mistakes and more importantly lessons learned are in this book and we.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Positions added up there. We need to add new partners for a law firm. We can add the profiles so it's not just the request that the client might make for the website to be changed which is where they thought they wouldn't make a lot of changes but as a marketing agency were able to add as much as we need to the site and we don't charge the climb because we have a managed service if you will so first reinstate that value that we can bring in why they wanna do that long term with us if that does not work then you go back to the drawing board and say well if you're not happy with the service and you want it just for a year that's fine month eleven. Just tell us then it month. Twelve will release. The website will give it to you. It's yours you can go on your way and we still get the sale and they don't have to commit longer than that. We're not asking them to anyway. In this case so our best case would get the deal and they just don't cancel that service was they're gonna see the value that it brings worst case. They signed anyway. They weren't with us for a year. And we just remove that one service while we continue to do the other services so they answer cannot just be discount lower the price we go back to the value we reinstate the value. We share whilst importance to their business. You know it's not about us. It's about them and if that doesn't work then you go to the next thing but add more value if you can explain the value already bring but don't discount don't change your prices because once you do that becomes a standard and you start to do it all over and over again. There's clients refer other potential clients. They might say. Hey yeah they give us a discount on this they these fees here and now. The referral is going to expect the same thing. So don't discount show the value add more value or walkaway. It's not worth it than the day. There's other prospects out there. There's other deals out there. It's not fit. You know it's just you got to say. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. Well that is the exact group of people that we have in our business growth mastermind. Check out more formation at array mentor dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Hey there i'm eric olsen. I'm kevin days with join us our journey to building a one hundred million dollars company. What's happening. It's eric j olson. As i was writing my book million dollar journey how to launch a seven figure business which is by the way out on amazon. You can find about searching for a million dollar journey or search for my name eric olson. That's erik with a k. olsen ending an. When i was writing this i was reflecting back to some of my very earliest times that i earn my own money and what i realized was the first time that i earned my own money and i don't mean like from the tooth fairy putting money under my pillow but like we're actually hustled has some sort of a job or a gig and i made my own cash from nonrelatives. The very first time was. When i had just moved from california to virginia and within a week or maybe two weeks it snowed and it snowed pretty heavily for like two or three days and so my mom sent me outside with a shovel. Said go go shovel the stoop and the sidewalk and she wanted me to shovel around her car that she could get in the car and should get back out and get to work the next day and so i did that. And we lived in a townhouse community and so i was on the outside We were on the the n. unit so the sidewalk was actually fairly long compared to our neighbors. But i did all that it took about. I don't know fifteen or twenty minutes to shovel. And when i was doing that i noticed that my neighbor right store. They had shoveled their sidewalk yet. And so i was like well. Maybe they wanted done. I can make a couple bucks. So i went up to their door. I not not not. They opened i said. Would you like your sidewalk shovel. If they said yes how much i said. It's in the book. I forget how much i said. I think it was ten bucks. Maybe and they said sure. They closed the door. I shall this. I walk i not again. They open it. They saw that. I did the work. And i got ten bucks and so just like that as a kid you could just like walk up to someone's house and knock on the door and offer them services and if they accept you get money as adults would never do that. Which is really odd to me. That lack of inhibition. Guess is the word the phrase just kind of goes away and you know. We don't do those kinds of things anymore right. That's beneath us. I guess but as a kid you don't care and so i did with that first house. I'm ed ten bucks. I did with several more houses. And i made a bunch of money for a seventh grader. But i also didn't get to play quite as much as my friends. But so i did several houses i made a bunch of money and then i walked around the neighborhood and i found my friends. They are still playing. And i played with them and i still got to enjoy the snow day so i could have just played all day so you know we. We got the day off of school. I could've played all day like everyone else. But i did a little bit of work. I made a bunch of money for me at the time. It was a ton of money. And then i still got to play again. The next day there was more snow on the sidewalk on the cars. Because it's not that night. And i went back to the exact same houses and offer them to freshen up their sidewalk for reduced price and most of them accepted so now i had repeat business. It was amazing like it was such easy money but it tommy a lot of lessons. Actually there was. There were lessons. That i'd been in learn at all but lesson number one is like if you see. There's a problem in this case. People haven't shoveled their sidewalk. See if they want us that problem solved and if they do you can solve the problem if you have the right tools in this case a shovel also reoccurring revenue every time. It snowed thereafter. I would go shovel sidewalks. And i would do more each time so i was looking forward to the snow days. Not just because. I didn't have to go to school because i can make easy money. And by the way this was easy work for me it would only take like ten or fifteen minutes and get paid. I mean again. When you're in seventh grade eighth grade ninth grade It could be real money. So this is reoccurring revenue. That's the lesson that didn't learn. And you know. I kinda got away from that as i got older. You know like i said before. Why don't we do these things and we're older when we're kids. We have no fear. We'll go right up and ask for the business when we're older scientists big drama right so what. I'm encouraging do i want to say in. This book is think back to some of the earliest times where you earn your own money. And what lessons can be gleaned for experience that you had. I shoveled snow. I cut grass. I deliver the newspaper. I sold below pops in the halls of the high school. I did a bunch of stuff to earn money and every single one of those was it learning experience and came with lessons. Learned and those takeaways are in here and those takeaways actually got advanced to even today. Some of those lessons learned or not learned but in reflection i should have can be applied today to my business. It's frigging amazing. What you learned when you were a kid if you hustled for a little bit of extra cash. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. That is the exact group of people that we have. In our business growth.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Should you buy or lease your office. Hey there i'm eric olsen and i'm heavy join us an hour journey to building a one hundred million dollars company. Hey there it's eric j olson. I posed this question because here at digital we've asked the question multiple times in the early days of starting my own entrepreneurial journey. I didn't really do either. I subleased a single room in a bigger office. I did that a couple of times. And i did that because i didn't have a lot of money coming in and i didn't want to spend a lot of money on overhead things like office space and i really didn't need a lot of overhead or an office and so in the beginning i i guess i least but it was really a sublease if you will later when i was ready to give my own office i did think about should i buy or should i lease but i was still relatively new to being a business owner and the business was still immature. I mean we were doing well but we didn't have a lot of experience behind us. This is probably about two years in. And i thought you know. I'm not ready to buy something. I don't i don't understand what what what that even means. So i leased a space and we were there for about a year and a half and we had some problems with the space as far as things like the ac not working in the summertime. he'd not working in the wintertime. Oh there was also sewer smells. They came up from the crawlspace. It was lovely. Trust me even one time. One time the bottom floor flooded and then he got all over the rug and it too strong up. And i had had enough about about once a month at the staff like okay. Don't work from the office work from home because there's a problem in the office and you get really tired of that one you're paying rent and you can't actually use the space one time. I almost had to cancel an event that is scheduled two months in advance for gavin event in the office and There was a problem. And so i just got tired of it and so i knew i had to move now at that point. I asked myself the question again. Should i lease or should i buy. But then i is probably about four years into running. The business and revenue had increase. There were more employees. Looked like the company was going to continue to grow. And i thought this could be a good time to buy an ended up looking around ended up. Finding the space that i'm in right now the array digital office. And i bought it. It was a a stretch. I had never bought a commercial office space before but it was a brand new build out. The union was about ten years old but no one had ever occupied it and so as concrete floor and concrete walls. And i could do whatever i wanted to which was also a big perk so it was easy for me to get with an architect. Get a design. I got alone for the whole deal and it turned out to be a good and it also turned out to be relatively easy. But i got what we needed. And we're still here today so for me. The first two times at asked the question like lease or by was no the third time was yes more recently when we started rival digital towards the end of two thousand twenty. We ask ourselves the same question again. This time it was now. Me and kevin versus just me alone and we looked to buy some properties but there just wasn't a lot on the market that we like we were not happy with the pricing and the inventory there we only saw like three or four places that even had potential for a purchase and value. Just wasn't there. So we ought to go with ashley in this case a subway so we were going to lease but then at the last minute. We discovered a subleasing opportunity. And what we're doing. So rival following the same path as array digital and predecessors the companies kevin iran for years subleasing. I probably only snacks. And then eventually if the market is right we're going to ask you purchase something. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience. The group of successful business owners well. That is the exact group of people that we have in our business growth mastermind. Check out more information at a ray mentor dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Hey there i'm eric olsen and i'm kevin days join us on our journey into building a one hundred million dollars company. What's happening. It's eric j olson as far as the whole funnel if you will for getting clients in here the very first stop is our marketing collateral. These are things like our posts on social media the ads. That are running in places like google and facebook. The things that we do to get general attention either across the entire population or within ideally a segment that we support so as an example if we want to sign on a lot of lawyers for our law firm marketing offering we will run ads targeted to lawyers and we speak in terms that they understand and we drive them to our website array law dot com and. Hopefully they get to a point where i know this is interesting. I want to talk to these people. And they'll either fill out a form or they'll schedule a call in calumny or those. Pick up a call. Pick up a phone and they'll call us so the very first step is marketing. The second step is sales. At that point our salesforce takes over those lease go to kevin and then kevin dishes them out to the salesperson. That's most available most qualified. Whatever he has a way of figuring out who's going to get what lead. So he assizes leads to at. This point is glenn or joe. Sometimes he keeps them himself. Were hiring more salespeople and so he's a distributor of the believes. The salesperson gets involved. They are the first stop like when it comes person to person on the journey. If you will the buyer's journey so when a lawyer wants to possibly do some work with us they're interacting with the salesperson and establishing a relationship with the salesperson for the point where hopefully they get an agreement and sign the agreement when that agreement signed. We need to sift who owns the relationship. And here's why sales people are really good at selling but generally speaking they're not good at running operations and what i mean by that is. There's just not a lot of people who know a lot about selling and time in knowledge to actually perform the function of whatever it is that they sold. We're service business so it's not like you know they're buying a t shirt and it just gets delivered like this constant serving of whatever it is that we sold so we need an operations team that is going to then take the relationship and they're going to take it from there and so there's an actual hand off here to ray digital the salesperson and the operations folks are in a meeting that we call the kickoff meeting there in the meeting together and the purpose is to begin the transition of the relationship being owned by the salesperson to the royster shape being owned by operations and in particular in our case by jamal. Who is our project manager. And so the goal of this kickoff is at. Jamal is running the meeting. He's interacting with the client and the salesperson. Is there just to add some color commentary if needed. Maybe explain a few things but their job is pretty much over at that point now where we say to sale as we want you to continue to talk to the client but you're not going to get involved in operations you're not gonna take direction from them as far as what needs to happen in the operations itself. Defer all that to jamal or to jake and they'll take care of it. They own the relationship now and so. There's a very clear hand off at the kickoff meeting and if this is important because if we had the same person with a sales person or an account manager doing both of those things all the time we would never scale there is no way you cannot have the same quantity in quality of work happening if everything goes through one person again whether salesperson or an account manager doesn't really matter and so we need to take those things and we need to split them up. There is a division of labor and a division of disciplines. Here that is crucial sales cells operations operates. It's very clear from the names. What their role is and what their purposes and we do not like crossover at all. Now there's communication. There's collaboration between the two groups and they act as one big array digital team. But we don't want our operations people selling and we don't want ourselves people jumping into operations. They need to talk to one another and so any time that i see that that happens. Where one side crosses over the other side. It's a big no for me. And that's when i really start to get involved and frankly certain muscles to say we're not doing that here. Sales sell and operations operate so clear from the name is clear from the direction that we've given them but it's important and when something is important you have to say it a lot of times you have to say. It's a lot of different people. Sometimes you have to say it in different way if the write it down to remind the team but you know really importantly when you see something happening that is inconsistent with the way that you want it. It's your responsibility to say something immediately and to speak up and enforce the things that you've said you know the way that you've already said that you want things done because if you just let it kind of like pass on by without correcting it you are implicitly saying well. I guess it wasn't unimportant anyways. And that's what people here from your silence so you have to say what you want and then make sure that what happens is what you said. You want to.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Paint a clear vision for your team. Pay their i'm kevin daisy and i'm eric olson. Join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollar companies. Everybody this is kevin daisy here. So what i mean by paint a clear vision for your team is different than a typical mission or vision statement so when we first came vision statement it was basically grow to a hundred million dollar company so very kind of broad and big doesn't mean much to a staff member of team member employees. They might not care. They might say okay. Kevin and eric they wanna make a hundred million dollars. Why does that matter to me. And they might not care they might not resonate with it and they might be here for different reason but they might not give a crap about that but you need to have a vision that they care about and understand and can get behind but for us it was more. We kind of knew what that could mean for everybody but we didn't really put that into words. We didn't really communicate that will so we actually went back to the drawing board. We talked about it. Thought about it with our management team and expanded upon that. There's a great book called vision. Which is really good. Check that out. It'll help you kind of really take the next level but for us we took it to a little bit the next level by a few words to our vision statement which makes it a little bit more clear to people. We want to create opportunity by becoming a hundred million dollar powerhouse. Saw the opportunity part which is a very small piece of that sentence we took it to the team and we actually doing. Our holiday party rebel to Taught everyone on the team. Explain what that really meant for each team member. It might mean a different thing. So i think eric explained it very well. We wanna take everyone's dreams that works for us and fit them inside of our goal right so one hundred million dollars. If we got to that point we feel like we can fit. Everyone streams that so opportunity for you might be traveling. Maybe it's more money. Maybe it's financial freedom. Maybe it's a healthcare savings. Maybe it's just more responsibility leading the team. So there's a lot of different opportunities for people and we feel like if we grow and continue to grow that we're going to create any of those opportunities so the lowest level person in our company. Now an intern could be ten years from now. A c. level executive be traveling around the country could be opening another offices leading regions. Whatever right we don't know exactly what's going to happen ten years but we know that we want to get a certain place and we wanna look ahead and say i can see where we're going and we see opportunity for everyone so that's what we did is we made a small tweak to our statement is not just eric vision but it should be something that the whole company can believe in get behind and see that they have a part in that and they fit inside of that so paint a clear vision for your team make sure they can feel touch in believe it and then they're going to want to be part of that and they're gonna be dedicated. They're going to be ready to be part of the team. The culture innocent workout for everyone. So look at what your mission or vision says. Make sure it's clear. Sit your whole team down. Make sure they understand what your vision is. They can always see what the entrepreneur sees so. Make it clear. Make it easy and it's gonna make a big impact. How much more successful would you be. You could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. That is the exact group of people that we have in our business growth masterminded check out more formation at a ray mentor dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"The kindle version of my book is finally published. Hey there i'm eric olsen and i'm kevin days join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollars company. What's happening. It's eric olson. Today is february nineteenth. I record this and finally the kendall version of my upcoming book. I guess it's not even upcoming anymore. It's just my book. Million dollar journey is out on amazon. It's been interesting ride so a couple of things that i've learned very very recently about publishing and it's just kind of fill in the cracks on how it works behind the scenes. And certainly if you're interested in writing a book maybe some things that you should know. Is that the kindle version is published completely independently of the paperback version which is independent of the audiobook version. So interestingly although. I've been really focused on the paperback for the last over a year. I guess about a year and a half at this point the kindle was the first one ready to go to market and what happened was a- been trying to get the print version correct. But there's been a problem with the barcode in particular. We had a bar that we designed to into the back of the cover. The back cover page and amazon kept printing their own bar code right on top of that and so we we saw it the first time there was a problems we move things around with all we nailed it second time when we got an actual proof of the physical book to me it was still messed up and so the third time i said. Hey scott who's illustrator said. Just remove it. Just get rid of the barcode because clearly amazon is going to print their own bar code and so he did that. And i've ordered the third proof. It s should have that by tomorrow if that looks good that only click the publish button in amazon and a paperback should be alive within twenty four hours. They say seventy two hours but it looks like it's really more like a couple of hours actually well. The interior of the book and front cover is done. So i actually went to five or in a hired someone to convert that into the kindle version you upload the same version like there's a special formatting for kendall and i didn't wanna do it and i don't understand what the format news and i don't want to spend any time figuring out so i went to fiber. I searched for the top tier kendall editor on fiber. And i also put a little button. That says forget exactly what it's called in fire. Basically only return people are only people in the search results that are online right now. Because i wanted to do is start that communication with that person right away. I didn't want any delay like depending on where the on the world they may not even see my message for who knows how long you know while twenty four hours and so i to someone that was online immediately to look and give me a quote and so very quickly within an hour had sent this person files that he needed. He gave me a quote. I pay extra for twenty four hour delivery like you know what. Let's just get this done so it really wasn't all that expensive within twenty four hours. I had the kindle version in hand while the baracuda issue is still being worked out the print version. So uploaded to amazon and the last step is like there's a button that says save as draft or publish it. I'm like you know a screw it. I'm already published boom so published the kindle version and by the next morning when i check my email i had got an email from amazon. Saying congratulations this alive. And i'm like. Wow that's cool so it is up there. The paperback version is like day or two behind it. And then what i discovered with the audio book audiobook version is ready to go as well. It's all recorded. It's all edited. When i went to to actually upload the audio version incident different website is called a but the very first step. Is you have to pick your book from the amazon catalogue. Basically like you put in your name or you put in the name of the book and then it brings back searchers results. That's my book and then you had you know basically attach the audio version to it and since my book wasn't published nothing came back yet. I need to go in there. And just minute. After a record this ashley and see if i can pick my kindle version of the book so that i can start the process of publishing the audiobook from what i understand. It takes at least a week to a month. Once you submit it to actually get it live out audible so anyways the end is near and i couldn't be more excited. This has been a long journey to publish million dollar journey. And i think the actual editing and writing and all of that part of the journey is done which is what i kind of consider phase one phase two. Once everything is published out there on amazon an audible is to promoted. So you'll be hearing me talk about the book a lot more in the future and prior for the next six to twelve months i do have some other projects. Planned one with kevin and we haven't talked too much about it. We have the concept but not to be coming out in about a year and a half or so so i. I don't think that this book writing experience is over by any stretch of the imagination. I think is just beginning. And hey lucky for you kevin. I've got a lot of lessons. Learned and a lot of mistakes that i've made along the way so that when we put out our book we can just streamline the whole process how much more successful would you be if you can harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. Well that is the exact group of people that we have in our business grew mastermind. Check out more information at ray. Mentors dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"To those who directly helped me finish million dollar journey. Thank you very much. Hey there i'm eric olsen. I'm heaven days. Join us an hour journey into building a one hundred million dollars company. Hey there eric olson. My book is days. Hopefully maybe weeks away from being done and on amazon for your purchasing pleasure hint hint. But now it's going through the acknowledgments section. And there's a lot of people that i think i thought about doing one episode but there's just too many people to thank in too many stories to tell sob at breaking it up into multiple episodes in no particular order but today i want to focus on those that directly assisted in getting the book started and completed. So i i want to start with zach miller and i've mentioned him before in this series of acknowledgments but in this particular case he was the one who i told. I wanna write a book and he had already put a book called anomaly. Which is a fantastic book. If you haven't read it yet or listen to it. Check it out. It's on amazon is on audible. Really fantastic book about how to set yourself apart from the crowd. Well i knew that he had gone through the process so i really leaned on him a lot. We talk a lot. And and i asked him like everything like told me everything and every time i had a thought or whatever i'd go to him when it came for advice and he along the way not only that once i had finished writing the book he read the whole thing which is a little unusual for is more of a a listener of books. Think is getting more into actually reading with his eyes but he I printed it out for him. I gave it to him and he read the whole thing and he gave me feedback. Lots of feedback implemented all of it. So thank you very much number one for guiding me kick in the ass when i just wasn't moving fast enough and then reading the book and helped me along the second person. I wanna thank jennifer jazz. Who is my editor. So i found jennifer actually through fiber now is looking for like the top tier fiver people. I found jennifer. She had listing there. And somehow i found her website. I went through a website and talking about niching all right solidly in fern editor for my nonfiction business books. When i went to a website it said very clearly she edits nonfiction business. Books and this is the power of niching. The moment that i saw that. I was like jennifer is likely the perfect match for me. Versus the other editors websites. That i went to the said. Oh yeah we do non-fishing we do romance. We children's books. We do whatever you're gonna pay us to do. Not jennifer general is very specific in the kinds of clients. You work with with and guess what that worked for me and so we talked anti piran. Her she's done more at. Its than we probably both anticipated. The i was a what's called a developmental. Edit where she looks at it doesn't read through the book and she's like This paragraph is out of place and usually go down here and you need to add a chapter and you're inconsistent throughout the. She gave me homework afterwards. And i did the homework in the books. Better for the second at it was was caught a line at it. And that's where she goes through word by word line by line and literally fixes like all the typos and all the punctuation and just all that stuff uh. She's done more at. Because when i did the narration for the audio book out as well i found other things that i needed to change. And and the the who get your next graphic artist. He touched the book when he had to play it out and says she had approved it. So it's probably like four rounds at least three rows maybe four rounds of that. It's just by her by the way i did like to before it ever got to her myself. So thank you jennifer loss and loss of and i appreciate every moment that you put into it and then the third big person was my cousin and illustrator and graphic artists. Scott massey scott. I like all kind of distant relatives. You kind of know what they do. But you don't really like you know. Exactly what they do not even distant relatives like people they don't know intimately you kinda sorta know what they do. I kinda sorta knew that. He worked in magazines and and graphic artists. Graphic artists free. I knew that he worked for places had done. Work for nike surfer magazine. Patagonia fairly well known brands. I would say. And i kind of had a guess of the kind of work that he was doing also knew that he was coming out with the book and many many months when when i first contact at him the book is all his creative work and he had kickstarter. I contributed to it. And so i knew that he knew something about books. Well it turns out. He knows all About books because in his previous gigs. I like patagonia. It would put out the books and so he. He's book artist and so he. I initially called him for the cover and in particular. I want something totally different. I would never create and then my team here to a digital. Whenever come up with i just want to something totally different totally hopefully cool and he delivered this. I wish i had a pitch right now. I show the people that are watching the video. The covers bad ass frankly but then when he took it even further every single page of a book has to be designed. Isn't it it's crazy. And because like you don't want like a single word to drop down onto. Its own sentence at the end of a paragraph. so he would adjust the spacing and all sorts of stuff and he got that book tight when it comes to layout every single page and his fingerprints are all over it and it's cool man like sky. You've done a great job man. So if you're interested in reaching out to any of these people i wish i had there. You are else and their email addresses handy. But don't so hit me up on social media. I'll be more than happy to connect you with them. My social media is at. I am eric j. I a. m. e. r. i k. j. o. l. s. o. n. d. m. e. There a hook you up with them. If you're looking to do any of this kind of work let's the folks that directly helped me get this done thank you. How much more successful would you be. Harnessed experience of a group of successful business owners. That is the exact group of people that we have in. Our business grew mastermind. Check out more information at a ray mentor dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"What's happening it's eric. J olson i m putting the finishing touches on my upcoming book million dollar journey which is all about my experience going from freelancing and having no revenue also ever to growing a business that's a million dollars or more in revenue per year. It took eight years. It was quite a struggle. And as i was finishing up the actual book. My editor told me that i needed to write an acknowledgment section acknowledging. The people who had helped me and i touch on a lot of these folks throughout the book but in a one or two page section at the very end of the book i got into maybe a little more detail or specificity as to how each of these folks and groups of people have helped me in my journey all along the way even well before i started my own company learning started on day one the moment that i started to interact with business. People and businesses and a family had a really big impact on me in that regard Starting really with my parents. Larry in janet olsen. So when i was in high school my dad retired from the air force and he decided to open up a video store. This is the very late eighties and video stores. Were all the rage thinking about netflix. Like it is today. While video stores was the netflix of the day. You went to video stores to get movies. And he needed a lot of help. He was running the store. He had one store. When i first got injected into the business and it wasn't a lot dropped out of high school or anything there fulltime but i did work there occasionally nights and weekends when i was relatively young and when he was just on business but then when i was in college so this is like early nineties. He opened up a second video store and he needed a lot of help organizing the videos themselves that he had purchased from another company and he hired me as a summer gig to just take care of all the inventory. And it's amazing. In retrospect but it took literally months to get it ready between me and a bunch of my friends at pulled into it. But it taught me so much in the way of leadership deadlines making a commitment to your boss and making sure that you nail that commitment. And i also just witnessed my parents in the business. I witnessed by dad interacting with customers and employees. My mom as well she worked there occasionally. She had a full time job as she was there. Nights and weekends out on the floor behind the counter and i just picked up so many nuggets of wisdom and how to interact with people whatnot. So thank you to my parents. Larry and janet and more recently my wife leah olsen in a not only is she extremely supportive to me and all the things that i want to kind of accomplish in life just to deal with the ramifications sometimes of combat that i have and writing a book starting a company you know. These are big long term projects and they devour a lot of my energy and time the she encourages me to go forth with it. So you know from from a support mechanism a truly appreciate. It could not have got this done without her at all But also we were business partners for a while into a little more detail into that and another episode. But they're huge lessons. Learned there a. She ran the operations iran. The back office but also helped out over here and there. But a lot of gosh so many issues that we had to get through and And it was tough. It was really tough but we got through. We're in a better place. And you know. I learned so many so many lessons from that business venture unfortunately at at her expense. Frankly because i mean mistakes and you know when you make mistakes and certainly have business partner. It hurts you both so and her business. But gosh there's so. Many lessons learned how to deal with public. How to deal with employees. How to price properly scoping of your work. I mean we went through all everything that i've gone through here to read digital has benefited directly from that experience. So the first group of people that. I wanna thank our family for supporting me. We'll do a couple more episodes i. There's just too many people to thank frankly in one episode. I want go a little deeper. So we're going to break this up a little bit into both left sets. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. That is the exact group of people that we have in our business. Growth masterminded check out more.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"How many opportunities did we lose. Because we weren't a niche agency americans in. I'm kevin days. Join us our journey to building. A one hundred million dollars. Hey there eric day olson ever. Since the early days of going into business. I had a suspicion that i would do. Better if niche in a particular industry but i never really could figure out what industry to niche into and that uncertainty rolled into array digital when kevin and merged companies to form the company. That has now already digital. We both knew that pitching was probably a good idea but we again..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Getting serious about our crm pay there. I'm kevin daisy and i'm miracles. Join us on our journey to building one hundred million dollar companies. What's up everybody. This is kevin easy here. So we've had a crm since the beginning but we've lightly used it to really harnessed the power of a crm. Now when i sorted out. It was eric and i basically tracking our own deals in referrals and leads and so we really didn't have to have a full blown. Crm and we didn't put in every single thing notes in data and track every single movement. We made we were fortunate again to have pretty large networks. Get a lot of referrals and being out in networking and things like that to jump our business so we'd be logged the deal and we would follow a deal pipeline but we did not really again use tasking notes call logs and then down the contact level. We just logged basic things mostly emails in correspondence. Now that we have moved brought glenn on mckenna the same thing so glennon. I you know we kinda do our thing. Glints got a lot of experience. He's got a lot of referrals in past clients and glenn is what he's doing so when it's just me glenn again. We did not have to track as much data because two people were able to manage our day and look at the sales that we bring in. We're doing well. There's no need to dive into the granular data. Now fast forward. We have joe who joined the team and now we have two more people that were trying to hire now is very important to have. Crm that is in tip top shape and everyone including myself is actually using it in logging to it every day. All your activities calls emails deal stages expected deal closed dates. All that stuff has to be done so it's a little harder to do once you haven't been doing it. It's easy to make a new person do it. so now we're getting serious unknown reports. I got the dashboard setup. I'm checking to make sure that we all have our stuff in and then we do a pipeline review. Every monday morning to make sure that all of our stuff is the date depar- because we run company. Kp is on wednesday so when caccia on our team got kpi's on tuesday. I want the sales team to have their crap together so again including myself. So that's what we're doing now. We're getting serious about it. We know we can't hire a bunch of salespeople without the data in there so they can know what accounts to go after what accounts not to go after. And then there's an account that's been stale or no one's touched it in six months to a year. A new salesperson could actually take that account check with the previous owner. And try to drum up business with that client or that account. So we're getting serious about our crm. We're gonna dive in deep where it started forecasting and. I'm excited that we're doing this now. I wish we've done it a lot sooner. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. That is the exact group of people that we have. In our business growth mastermind check out more.
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Exactly how old is digital. Hey there i'm erica. And i'm kevin join us on our journey to building a one hundred million dollar company. What's happening eric j olson. It may seem like a ridiculous question. How old is digital. But there's been a lot of discussion about that actually around here. And here's why when we first merged companies my company and kevin's company to form or a digital in one of the things that we were lacking as a brand new company was validation and so on the one hand we could've said oh we're brand new a trust us on the other hand we wanted to portray that. We had a lot of experience. Ashley in what we were doing. In actuality we had ten years experience. Kevin started his business ten years before we actually immerse companies assorted mine about seven years. I think it was something like that ashley. That's probably done. Even yeah eight years so but but between the two of us we had been in business for ten years and so we decided that we were going to say that we were a ten year old company. So it's certainly kind of stretching the truth. it's a little bit of puffery if you will. We certainly explainable. We've been doing this for ten years. We just rebranded totally true so we even came up with a little icon said like a ten year old digital marketing agency and we were used that on all of our marketing literature. I recently came across this one of our old videos and the old videos. We have like this little intro and it would start with an a with the the brackets around it which is our icon. And then you hear the cookie cookie. Click just like you here in the podcast but it would expand and every time you heard a click click. It was the key going down and it would be an extra character in and it would form right digital so would go from a to array digital on the brackets. That was a long winded way of trying to set up the story. I have been talking about that but there was also a ten year logo that we created ourselves. That was in that intro. And when i saw that on my We got a problem here and the problem is that every year. Since the merger event we have celebrated array digital's birthday and guess what after the first year we celebrated our first birthday and we celebrated our second and then we celebrated our third and fourth is coming up. It's february so we put out there very publicly. Were a ten year old company. But we're also saying we're a three or four year old company. It doesn't make any sense. We have gotten to the point where we don't need to kinda lake fudge the truth if you will or spin it or anything like that. There's no explanation that's needed anymore. We are a four year old company. Not a ten or now it would be fourteen year old company the prom when you do something like this when you kind of you know kind of stretch the truth is eventually you know the real truth actually comes out and then people will be skeptical. While are you a ten or fourteen year old company before. I don't understand. I'm seeing the social media posts. Eric antena says your four year old but on your website. It says ten. There's a discrepancy those of discrepancies of basically getting caught in a lie. If you will. I'm saying we're relying but the point is we had a different version of the truth. Alternative facts if you will and that's not a good thing to have so we've recently decided you know what we don't. We're not doing that anymore. And you know we. We've we stopped doing all sorts of things like that like claiming that you know. Our wives were part of the staff and saying we had more people than we were contractors. Report part of our staff to say that we have more people than we. Actually we stopped doing all of that years ago but this ten year thing kind of lingered in some old marketing collateral. So that's why. I led with this podcast. Saying like how old are we. Are we ten years old. Like the logo says are we actually fourteen years old because that will give us credit for years ago or we. Four years old so we have a definitive answer array digital is four years old and that is the truth. How much more successful would you be if you could harness the experience of a group of successful business owners. Well that is the exact group of people that we have in our business grew masterminds. Check out more information at ray mentor dot com..
Journey to $100 Million
"100 million" Discussed on Journey to $100 Million
"Law firm marketing medical practice marketing and marketing for home services companies and contractors over at rival digital. It's a lot more focused. And it's this digitally call it a segment because he's a broad broad segments. Think about the medical industry. it's huge. There's lots of different specializations over a rival digital. We took it to the extreme. And we've niche so niching as much tighter much more well defined and for rival digital were focusing on residential. Hvac contractors. And that's it. There are no other clients that we're going to work but for each one of them. We have a very specific group of prospects that we want to get in front of we. In the past onto a lot of different generic marketing groups i to say networking groups really generic networking groups generic organizations that service. Lots of different people. Basically if you're in business at all and you wanted to meet people than we were there we we spend time we will spend money to get memberships to these different organizations and it's great for brand awareness. General brand awareness. But at this point says we segmented at digital. We've niche for rival digital. I don't care as much about generic general brand awareness. The reason that we had focused on is because we have choice. We were trying to service everybody and so we had to try to reach everybody now that we segmented and niche. I don't really want to reach everybody anymore. It's great if everybody knows who we are. But that's not going to make our phone ring. And that's all. I really care about when it comes to marketing a raid digital rival digital. Is we get calls. We get emails and we get referrals for new work so the best thing for us is to go to were these kinds of folks hang out. What are the chances of a doctor or a lawyer or a home services contractor hanging out at each generic networking event very very low. Now we have bumped into those ideal prospects at generic events in the past but there may only be of them out of a thousand people that are intended. That's not a good use of our resources. Time or money..