40 Burst results for "2019"
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 688:FTXs Legal Woes, Hong Kongs Crypto Surge, and CFTCs DeFi Focus
"Good evening, and welcome to The Crypto Overnight. I'm Nickademus, 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 10pm on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight, 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 dive into some tumultuous waters, from the legal quagmire surrounding FTX to Hong Kong's crypto rebellion against mainland China. The CFTC is setting its sights on DeFi, while Kenya grapples with the controversial WorldCoin project. The Ethereum ETFs underwhelm and Chainalysis cuts its workforce. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride. As Sam Beckman -Fried's trial is due to kick off today, I think it relevant to ask if we're off base on what happened at FTX. Let's start with the basics. FTX imploded last November, and the man at the helm, Sam Beckman -Fried, faces a criminal trial that kicks off tomorrow. He's up against seven fraud and conspiracy charges. The allegations? Misappropriating billions in customer funds. Noted author Michael Lewis defended FTX on CBS' 60 Minutes. He claimed FTX was, quote, a real business, not a Ponzi scheme. But let's be clear, federal prosecutors have a very different view. They questioned FTX's entire legacy, calling it a short -lived venture built on shaky ground. Now here's where it gets interesting. FTX was founded in 2019. By 2021, CNBC reported its revenue had skyrocketed to over $1 billion, up from just $89 million the previous year. But hold on, bankruptcy proceedings tell a different story. By the end of 2021, FTX and its sister company, Alameda Research, had racked up $3 .7 billion in operating losses for tax purposes. So where did that money go? Prosecutors allege that customer cash was mixed with assets at Alameda Research. The total shortfall? A staggering $8 billion. That's $8 billion of customer funds that went missing. Now, Lewis argues that FTX would still be profitable if traders had not withdrawn their money en masse. But let's not kid ourselves. Exchanges are supposed to hold one -to -one deposits. FTX failed to do that. It admitted to not having segregated reserves of customer assets. That's not just bad business. That's illegal. Lewis's defense of FTX has stirred the pot, especially for anyone skeptical of centralized exchanges. His comments come at a time when the crypto community is already on edge about regulatory scrutiny. His statements could be seen as an attempt to legitimize a business that federal prosecutors have labeled as fraudulent. But let's not forget, FTX is one of crypto's largest exchanges before its downfall. What does the crypto influencer cast have to say on the subject? Dan Held, a prominent figure in the crypto world, called it shameful for Lewis to defend Bankman -Fried. Why? Because exchanges can't handle deposits like banks do, at least not legally. The case against FTX and Bankman -Fried is a stark reminder of the risks involved in centralized exchanges. Unlike decentralized platforms, centralized exchanges like FTX hold customer funds, making those customer funds vulnerable to not only misappropriation, but hacks and embezzlement as well. It's also worth noting that FTX's downfall was not just a result of legal issues. The exchange faced a massive withdrawal of customer funds, forcing it to admit that it did not hold segregated reserves. This is a breach of trust that no decentralized system would allow. So what's the takeaway here? FTX is a lesson in the importance of regulatory compliance and financial transparency. It's a wake -up call for those who think they can skirt the law and still come out on top. Alright, you've just gotten a reality check on FTX. From one legal quagmire to another, let's pivot. Is Hong Kong having its own crypto rebellion defying mainland China? Folks, if you thought FTX was a rollercoaster, strap in for this one. Don't forget to hit those like and subscribe buttons for more insights.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "2019" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"More international flights in 2019 than any other u .s airport making it the fastest growing international gateway the u .s. without tumbled four hundred thirty one points tuesday the nasdaq lost one point nine percent jeff glable wtop news overseas this morning asian stocks are mainly lower with the exception of the shanghai which is up by three points the nikkei is down 590 points the kospe is off 56 points the hangsang is off 170 good morning welcome into wtop glad you're with us at 141 this is wtop news let's talk politics campaign 2023 on wtop seems that gop mega donors are hard at work
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1275. Ethereum ETF Launches! | VanEck Predicts $11,000 Ethereum
"All right, so let's roll into the ETF futures launch today. It has happened. This is going to be a big episode for you guys. You don't want to miss this one. If you're an Ethereum lover or maybe you're just trying to venture into crypto for the first time and you're finding out, hey, there's an ETF futures out there on this thing. We're going to teach you a little bit about that. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back in The Tech Path. Let's talk a little bit about Ethereum, some of the projects it could affect, and also its future. That's what we're going to try to break down for you. I think you guys are going to like this. James Seaford, he's been on our show before, one of the ETF experts over at Bloomberg. He tweeted, updated version reflecting the change due to the end of the Kelly and Hashtag's partnership will just be the Kelly ETF's product. And he kind of breaks it down. But the point is, is you've got the ETFs that have launched here with VanEck leading the way right now. Of course, we've got a whole litany of these starting to roll out now. So this is going to get interesting around the ETFs as when it comes to the futures ETF for Ethereum. And we'll show some stuff on this and how this plays out. But very, very interesting. So further over here, here's kind of just the layout of the VanEck. Obviously the cheapest total expense ratio at about 0 .66. So one of the lowest fees out there in being able to get into an ETF for sure. VanEck also is starting to do a little bit of advertising. This is kind of interesting with them actually starting to promote an Ethereum ETF future. This is crazy. So truly, and this is obviously institutional finance, so good stuff out there. I want to play a clip of them talking about this. Let's go to that. Ethereum has emerged as the system for an age where connections are no longer bound by location or space. We're not just using the network. We are the network. So when you're ready, enter the ether. Now you can tap into Ethereum's potential with the VanEck Ethereum strategy ETF, EFUT. All right, there you go. Big, big news because that is mainstream advertising. And when you get into mainstream advertising, it means you're going to be getting into mainstream investing and investing is going to start to shift that. That's why ETH and this ETF is such a big thing. It's why we're seeing a little bit of movement on Ethereum itself. VanEck, of course, their Twitter account says, what sets the EFUT apart? Typical ETF setups don't give futures, good tax benefits. C Corp is set up now designed to have potential for better performance after taxes for people who invest in a long time. So there are some apparent tax benefits here that VanEck, of course, is touting. So if you are in that case, make sure and, you know, investigate it. Let me know what you guys think. Further into this, just to show you where you can get this, now you can invest through your brokerage account in Robinhood, SoFi, Charles Schwab, E -Trade, Fidelity, pretty much anywhere you can buy EFUT. So easy to do and easy to get into. I want to go to this next clip right here that kind of breaks down a little bit further into what VanEck is trying to do with Ethereum as a whole. And this is Mr. VanEck himself What do you see coming in the crypto space that you thought it was important enough to get your firm that was established in the 50s moving towards this new area? Talk about Ethereum and there was CryptoKitties and all the potential of the blockchain. It felt like a lot of talk back then and a lot of PowerPoint presentations. But over the last three years, especially this year, I mean, it's just amazing how many software projects are not only coming to the market, but also upgrading in a very significant extent. And that includes Ethereum. I see three major areas of finance being potentially disrupted. One is the banking and brokerage. The second is payments. And the third is banking and lending. I think the larger point is that Ethereum is the leader and Ethereum is making enhancements, if you will, to its software. And so it's getting better over time. I like the fact that we're starting to see real business people recognize what's happening because this is one of those things that happens in those early curves. And that I think VanEck is obviously all in. But there's many of them that are all in on this. And that's including companies like Fidelity. You look at what ARK and Cathie Wood has been talking about in terms of Ethereum growth. So where is Ethereum going as a whole? Well, here is a report by VanEck talking about Ethereum's price prediction. And this was $11 .8K by 2030. Now, I want you to think about that because Ethereum right now trading around $1 ,700. And look at that kind of growth in a very short period of time. We're talking about 2023, end of right now as we're recording this video. That's an accelerant that's pretty heavy. Let me go through a couple of things they highlighted in the report. So it's revenue rising from an annual rate of $2 .6 billion to $51 billion in 2030. Big move. ETH takes a 70 % market share amongst smart contract protocols, which implies a token price of around $11K by 2030, which we discount to around $5 .3K today. So that's what they think the core value is. And then we value Ethereum by estimating cash flows because they're kind of treating the chain much like a business would be treated in terms of revenue and et cetera. A couple of points here that they look at here in their revenue price targets. You see the base case, bear case, and then the bull case. $11 .8K right there on the base case. $3 .43K on the bear case 2030. And then a $51K bull case. That's $51 ,000 per token right there on the bull case. So a lot in terms of confidence around what this is in terms of Ethereum as a whole. There was a We introduced a novel revenue item called security as a service, which is interesting, which is going to help businesses will be utilizing security through the ETH ecosystem to enhance, obviously, security around businesses themselves. So another big advantage there. Since ETH is a bearer asset, ETH can be locked behind some businesses or protocol guarantees to act honestly. So it's another way for how blockchain is permissionless. And it makes it easier for so much of what we see in Web2 to be completely revamped in Web3, which is what Van Eck was talking about there around blockchain and what Ethereum is doing in the banking space, the investment space, tokenizing a lot of things that we typically have to have these intermediaries to be talking to. Further into this report, we assume that 5%, 20%, and 10 % of the finance, metaverse, media, and tech infrastructure activity will move on chain. And what they're looking at is the base case, bull case kind of scenario that plays into finance, metaverse, and media, which is kind of an interesting mix between those. But media, we've talked about one of the reasons we do what we do. We believe that media is going to be moving on chain in the future. Further into this, let's see, we have one more couple of points here. Yeah, all right. Base case 2030 price target $11 .8 to Dermot valuation today's dollars. And then we find today's discounted price to be around $5 ,300. So not a bad value if you're looking at the overall on this. Let's go over to another clip here. And the other clip I want to get into is Matthew Siegel and kind of how they got to this level. Listen in. We're seeing a base case for 5 % or so of revenue banking is applied in some way to crypto and public blockchain. So that'd be the base. And so we dial it up a notch to 10%. Likewise, we do the same thing with each of the other categories, metaverse infrastructure, the bear case, we pull that down to 1%, 5%, 1 % respectively. And the idea behind that is that we see regulatory climate or adoption curve failing in each of those from the bear, hyper bear scenario. Not only is like the end markets not using blockchain, but Ethereum has a very small market share. Our assumption in the base and in the bull case is there's thousands of interchangeable L2s that don't have any real way to differentiate themselves. And so in that kind of scenario, you can see the cut rate that Ethereum can take of those settlements would be much, much higher or the underlying businesses. In our base case, we assume that Ethereum will take 70 % market share of all open source blockchains. And when we do our models on Solana, like that, our base case is that Solana takes 70%. And then we see what type of upside we get when we put in those assumptions. And we look at owning each of these tokens is basically we're owning a bunch of call options that each protocol will become the dominant protocol, even though it's impossible that they all could do so. And then we manage our position size based on what type of upside we see. Most of our deep dives have been on either layer ones or application specific. We have not done one of these models for L2s. And I think there's just more uncertainty around how that's going to play out. All right. So those were the VanEck analysts breaking this down that were part of that report that we just showed just a minute ago. So both of them kind of indicating that obviously ETH in a very bullish case, also Solana in a very bullish case. So another thing that is happening within VanEck, which is kind of interesting, is this right here. So they announced, let me kind of zoom in on this for you guys, that they intend to donate 10 % of our ETF profits into Protocol Guild for at least 10 years. So Protocol Guild obviously designed to help the ETH ecosystem develop, prosper, build on new Ethereum projects that are really kind of growing the ecosystem. So that is a pretty big statement, but it's also kind of investing in the infrastructure. It's interesting because you didn't really see that happen during the evolution of Silicon Valley, which is kind of where I case what's is we're in that kind of zone. They talked a little bit more about it. I'm not going to buy ETH Futures ETFs, but if I was, I would buy VanEcks mainly because they're doing what they should be doing, and that is supporting the industry and supporting where the growth is going to come from. So that's always benefited. I think the interesting thing there is that the space likes it. Here's Eric Balshunis, and they're off. ETH Futures Derby underway. VanEck is in slight early lead. Although it looks like a few of them are not necessarily out of the gate. We'll post updates as we go. VanEck, of course, leading the way right there and you've got Valkyrie coming in with a little bit of activity as well. VanEck with their low fees and what they're doing as an overall strategy might be the winner here. Remember, they were the first one. So it goes back to first mover. If you look at the current ETH Fut, of course, it's very early trading, but you can kind of see the big boom and then a little bit of a slight down where they are holding right around $16 .91. So interesting stuff. Let's go over to this next clip. This will break down a couple of things, I think, when you really consider what the store of value argument is around Ethereum. Let's just play this next clip. You'll get what I'm saying. So the whole exercise of the store value discussion is a little bit, you know, I really have to put a big caveat in there because what I'm really doing is mind reading. I can't point to a statistic and say, people, there was no poll that says I bought Bitcoin because it's a store of value. Things could be built on top of Bitcoin as well. And maybe they're just saying, oh, no, actually, I think Bitcoin's the best smart contract software. So I'm not a mind reader. So these are kind of generalizations and best guesses based on the narrative. And if you look at the transactions, on -chain Bitcoin transactions are about $400 ,000 a day. And that hasn't changed a lot over the last several years, which I think is interesting. But if you look at Ethereum, the Ethereum transactions, the total amount of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain is in the trillions annually now. That's a big number. Ethereum is the most famous. Solana has performed really well this year. I actually think that will continue next year. That category of digital asset tokens has been the best performing this year. We think that's kind of accessing the blockchain and that's the space that we're most interested as a firm. All right. Well, it's good to know. I mean, because I think they hit on both the tokens that we like, which is Solana and ETH. And if you do look at Bitcoin's transactions that it was mentioning there, and I meant to say Bitcoin transactions, but this is the one year and if you just go out to the three year, there has been a little bit of an uptick here. But I think some of this has been the idea of where all of this is going, because just in the essence of what is happening in crypto in general, it's starting to accelerate in a big way. And what he mentioned there, meaning Van Eck mentioned, is that the explosion has been happening around Ethereum. Of course, if you look at Ethereum's transactions, almost same period of time, you see the kind of movement that we're talking about here all the way back from 2019 right there into 2020, all the way to where we are right now, which is in the depth of a bear market. We are in the depth of a bear market when all this is happening. And when NFTs are dead and all those kind of things that really cause pain in the ETH that's ecosystem, the kind of transaction levels that we're continuing to see. Now, other things that are driving this, there's been a couple of projects that have launched here recently. One, of course, is Pudgy Penguins. We did a full report on this, but Pudgy Penguins ran a live shopping experience on TechTok. And there are some interesting things within this that is going on. And what I want you to think about is just forget that it's Pudgy Penguin, I just want to think about retail in general, because retail in general is going to start to implicate. Now, obviously, a Pudgy Penguins project, they're very native to what's happening in crypto. But the cool thing is, is direct sales, they have some key insights. Let me zoom in on this for you. Direct sales showcase products, increase discoverability, audience engagement, global reach. Any retailer out there, especially direct consumer, etc., would love those kinds of insights coming out of something in terms of a digital campaign. So, big deal. A couple of things that came, they did a pin appeared, allowing viewers to add the featured toy to their cart and then check out directly within the app. Remember, this is the digital version of the NFT. And then Pudgy Penguins received over 33 ,000 likes. TechTok Shop recently launched in the U .S. It was available through parts of Asia and the United Kingdom. And then live shopping is expected to reach around $235 billion in sales this year in China. That's insane. And then Pudgy Penguins obviously is a unique position to leverage TikTok Shop to expand their brand. This will grow globally for them, but I think what you're going to see is more retail and also more projects that understand how to leverage all of this. Remember, this is all riding on Ethereum. So, it plays right into the hands of think of what's happening here. So, it's not all friendly Penguins. Now, we've got the Swiss bank UBS launching tokenized money market fund on ETH. And I think this is just one of those things. They're doing an exploratory initiative, but they are going to go through traditional financial institutions, fintech providers, etc. Further into this, you get Ethereum applications from the New York Stock Exchange to the SEC. All of this riding on Ethereum. This is the point that I talk about often, and that is this whole adoption curve. Many people think it's that slow curve, and then all of a sudden it's just straight up. I don't know if we're there yet, but what I am thinking is that there's so much activity in this space and the timing through this bear market has been so suppressive of some of these digital assets that we could be right there on the cusp of an explosion. Now, obviously, there's a lot of other things that have to happen. Some of the things that could happen to cause that kind of explosion are things like this. Is BlackRock's next to file for a spot ETF? That would be huge. If BlackRock said, we're going to go the Ethereum route as well, absolutely massive for the ETH ecosystem. So, for sure. Now, this was an interesting statement. Ripple effect of grayscale decisions is massive. SEC would have faced similar legal challenges for denying ETH futures and ETFs. By approving ETH futures, ETF, now the SEC is effectively conceding that ETH is not a security. This will no doubt impact the Coinbase and Binance litigation. All of that starts to play into this. You start to get a picture of this global reaction that is going to happen within this ETH ecosystem. And I think this is the kind of thing that starts to put you in a position where you can really start to leverage against these. Now, it's not all beautiful, but this was Dave Levine. He talks about this whole ETF futures thing as a scam. I want to play a clip for you. Listen to what he had to say. Do not be fooled by the news that there is an Ethereum ETF. There is an Ethereum ETF, but it's not buying Ethereum. In other words, Bitcoin went up 35%. It's a pretty big game. But if you bought the fake ETF that is not buying Bitcoin, you only went up 14%. So where did that other, where did 50 % of your gains go? They're lying in the pockets of the bankers. Again, it's supposed to be protecting investors. You know, that's why I call these ETFs a scam and they use the name Bitcoin to say what you're buying and it's not what you're buying and it's guaranteed to underperform. I mean, what is the definition of a scam, right? He is a hired gun to do that stuff, right? And the, and the court ruled on it. They said that the SEC loses on all counts because its case and its, and its, uh, its arguments are capricious and incoherent. And there is this risk that, you know, ETH goes up so much, so fast. The Wall Street bank that is trying to track the price because they don't actually own ETH can't actually track it because whatever they're holding doesn't go up anything close as much. And then they go bankrupt because they can't meet the obligations. Believe me, if some Wall Street bank goes bankrupt because ETH goes up or Bitcoin goes up so much because they were playing games and they got exposed, they're going to blame crypto, not their shenanigans. So the whole thing stinks. Coinbase has a thing, it's called stand with crypto click. It tells you who your Congress person is, gives you a little script. I went off script and gave them an air full. Do it. All right. So he hits on a few things with point with these future ETFs is it happens in all markets. This is, this is just one of many out there that are non crypto related. It's obviously being crypto related. So I would dispel the fact that these are scam. These are yes, they're high fee scenarios. There are other ways to invest in these assets, but people look at this in a different way. Mainly this is mainstream investors wanting to go in on these assets and they're not ready to open an account with Coinbase or other things like that. But he did mention something at the end and that is stand with crypto. Listen, this, if you're not already doing it, you should be doing it. Go out and just hit stand with crypto. You can call your Congressman, email your Congressman and it helps you kind of go through the process of letting people know where you stand on all of the 16 ,000 contacts right now at the Congress. So huge, huge movement here. 150 ,000 crypto advocates. This is going to be a big part of next year because next year we are talking about an election year. So it's going to be huge. So definitely. Now if you are interested in buying ETH directly, you can actually do this in a traditional finance way right through the Fidelity app. So check it out if you're not a Fidelity customer. They're not a sponsor, but we've used it, we've tested it and it's fantastic. So that's another way to go. All right guys, we're going to wrap that one up from here. One thing to remember, and I'll leave you with this, this is Mr. Patrick McHenry hitting it in right there home. And that is SEC Chair Gensler refuses scheduled commission vote to provide Congress with requested documents. They are talking about the first subpoena to the SEC ever. That would be huge in the way of who knows what they'll find. What would we see in the way of bipartisan, you know, enforcement that we've seen the FCC pretty much put at will to go out. This may play its course right now with Patrick McHenry. He's not playing around anymore. We'll see how it all plays out. But you guys know what to do and that is join the diamond circle so you can follow what's playing it out. Not only the legislative side but also taking a look at some of the projects that we break down and of course some of our additional content including our Web3 podcast over there with Kyle. We do a We'll leave a link down below if you guys want to catch me on Twitter. It's out there at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path.
The Crypto Overnighter
Fresh update on "2019" discussed on The Crypto Overnighter
"And this is our cover story for tonight. The Kenyan parliamentary committee has advised authorities to shut down world coins operations and conduct a thorough investigation into the company. World coin had been collecting personal data from Kenyan residents, despite a court order issued in May 2023 to halt such activities. The committee's report raises significant privacy concerns, especially regarding the number of orbs or iris scanning devices in the country. The committee also suggests that the government should adopt a comprehensive framework for digital assets and revise existing regulations to address cyber crimes and tax reporting obligations. Not to take world coins side or anything, but let's talk about the inconsistencies in the government's stance. Iliud Oualo is the Kenyan ICT cabinet secretary. He's been censured for his inconsistent statements about world coins license status. Initially, he seemed to back the project, but later accused it of not adhering to registration requirements. This flip flopping has led to the committee to question world coins license claims. The committee's report states that world coins started collecting data in public places on May 31 2021, and applied for registration as data controllers in Kenya on August 22 2022. This implies that world coin may have operated for over a year without the required license, contrary to the Data Protection Act of 2019. The committee also found that world coins orbs were not approved by the Communications Authority of Kenya. Moreover, the transfer and storage of user data to Amazon Web Services servers in South Africa violated section 48 of the Data Protection Act. Two companies behind the world coin project, Tools for Humanity Corp and Tools for Humanity Germany, are not registered in Kenya's business registration service database. This means they lack the legal mandate to transact any business in Kenya. The Kenyan government's move against world coin is a glaring example of the regulatory hurdles that crypto projects face, especially those that collect sensitive personal data. This is a classic case of government overreach and a lack of clarity and regulations, leaving projects like world coin in the state of limbo. The fact that world coins orbs were not approved by the government's due diligence. While the crypto world is enthusiastic about decentralization and financial freedom, this sort of regulation hangs heavy. The Kenyan government's concerns about data protection and user privacy are valid, but also serve as a convenient excuse to clamp down on crypto projects. So what we have here is a multi-layered fiasco. World coins operations in Kenya are not just a violation of data protection laws, they also raise questions about the We've touched on legal battles and government oversight, but what about investor sentiment? Ethereum's ETFs hit the market and let's just say they didn't exactly soar. Want to know why? Stick around and find out.
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
A highlight from News Block: Did SBF Try to Pay Trump Billions Not To Run? U.S. Debt Hits $33 Trillion, Chase UK Banning Crypto, Honda Now Accepts Bitcoin
"Welcome to the CoinStories news block. I'm Natalie Brunell, and in the span of just 10 minutes, roughly the same time it takes to mine a new Bitcoin block, I'll provide you with concise, insightful updates on Bitcoin and the global financial landscape so you're well informed on the week's top stories. Everything you need to know in one place, in one block. Let's go. Bitcoin has been on the move this week, breaking out above its 200 -day moving average and climbing back above $28 ,000 a coin for the first time since mid -August. Despite its volatility, Bitcoin is now up 68 % on the year as it enters October. And October, by the way, has garnered the nickname, Uptober. It has typically been one of Bitcoin's best performing months. It's gone up an average of 22 % in October over the last 10 years. Some believe Bitcoin's recent price performance is related to increased awareness about the unsustainable nature of the US debt. Our national debt recently hit a concerning milestone when it crossed $33 trillion for the first time in history. According to the Treasury Department, this is a result of fiscal spending increasing nearly 50 % from 2019 to 2021. In other words, government officials went on a spending binge the last couple of years. And given the rise in interest rates, the US government is now spending more to pay interest on our $33 trillion in debt than it does on national defense. Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, who has written extensively on how we are about to reach the end of the long -term debt cycle, is warning that we might be close to a deleveraging event. The long -term debt cycle refers to the idea that over long time periods, typically 50 to 75 years, economies accumulate larger and larger amounts of debt with each short -term business cycle. This all culminates in a peak where the debt becomes unsustainable and sparks a large deleveraging period marked by reduced spending, falling asset prices, slower economic growth and debt reduction. In a recent interview, Dalio was quite blunt. We're going to have a debt crisis in this country soon. How fast it transpires, I think is going to be a function of that supply demand issue. And so I'm watching that very closely. The reality of the debt problem was all too apparent in a recent report from the Institute of International Finance that showed that global government debt has hit a record $307 trillion, the title of the report, In Search of Sustainability. Now, Bitcoiners have been sounding the alarm about the debt problem for many years, but now the narrative appears to be going mainstream. Bloomberg published a short documentary titled America's Looming Debt Spiral. So the media seems to be waking up to the fact that this debt is unpayable. The solutions, well, they can choose to default, which would be catastrophic and politically untenable, or they can choose to try to print their way out, which would devalue the dollar even more. Scarce assets like Bitcoin will ultimately be the beneficiaries as the debt spiral continues and investors are finally starting to recognize Bitcoin as an asset to protect themselves from the debt doom loop. All right, shifting gears, much of the focus this week will be on FTX and its founder Sam Bankman -Fried, whose criminal trial is set to begin this week. SPF faces seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of FTX. If found guilty on all charges, SPF could spend the rest of his life behind bars. FTX customers, investors, and employees will all be testifying in the trial against the infamous former poster child for crypto. In a 60 Minutes interview Sunday, author Michael Lewis, who's famous for The Ranging Interview about SPF and the book he's releasing about his rise and fall titled Going Infinite. Lewis had spent more than six months traveling with and interviewing SPF in the lead up to FTX's collapse. A letter from a talent agent from Creative Artists Agency said that Lewis likened SPF to the quote, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of crypto. Clips from that interview went viral on social media, including one in which Lewis says SPF was trying to pay former President Donald Trump billions of dollars not to run again in 2024. He also said there is an SPF shaped hole in the universe that now needs filling and that FTX was quote, a great real business. Overwhelming consensus on Bitcoin X, Twitter was Michael Lewis was casting FTX and SPF in a favorable light, despite operating one of the largest frauds in financial history. And heading into the trial, the timing and tone of this interview raised some eyebrows given that Lewis said the book was a quote, letter to the jury, which appears to suggest the jury should read the book potentially influencing the outcome of the court case. The trial will be dominating headlines for the coming months as the industry and millions of victims follow it closely to see what happens. FTX is still a topic of discussion in Washington DC, where the company came up in a hearing in front of the House Financial Services Committee. That's where SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was grilled for more than five hours on SEC oversight. Much of the conversation revolved around its enforcement actions toward the broader crypto industry. Democratic Senator Maxine Waters, who strangely called Bitcoin, Bitcoin during the hearing, asked Gary Gensler about ways he would protect investors from frauds like FTX and Terra Luna. Now I have to mention this was the same senator who met with SPF on multiple occasions prior to FTX collapse and even commended SPF for his candidness and willingness to talk to the public after the company went bust. Gensler and the SEC have also come under heavy criticism from Congress for meeting with FTX behind closed doors and also for the lack of clarity around the regulatory approach to the crypto industry. One notable exchange during the hearing was when Gary Gensler was asked directly by Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry whether or not he considered Bitcoin a security. This was Gensler's response. Well I think the staff of the SEC have also ended prior to the hearing. I'm just asking you this question and this is not a gotcha. I thought there's going to be an easy softball into harder questions. Do you think Bitcoin is a security? No, I think I've said this in the past that I think that it doesn't mean a Howey test. I'm asking to answer my question now. This is not supposed to be hard. I know I said it does not meet the Howey test which is the law of the land about being an investment contract. So it doesn't meet it's a commodity. Is that fair? I would say it's not a security and then the test is otherwise for other laws. Many of the questions directed at Gensler were around the SEC continuing to reject multiple spot Bitcoin ETF applications. Despite the congressional pressure for an ETF approval, the SEC continues to delay them. In the last week the Commission delayed its decision on several prominent ETF applications including ones from BlackRock, Bitwise, ARK Invest and Invesco. These delays came earlier than many expected and the SEC noted that the announcement was expedited due to the risk of a government shutdown that was narrowly avoided over the weekend. The next date to watch will be January 10th when the SEC will have to make a decision on ARK Invest's filing. And finally this week Bitcoin has not only been the topic of courtrooms but boardrooms as well. Companies continue to take different approaches when it comes to embracing or rejecting this new monetary technology. We saw two major companies take very different stances this past week. The first came from Chase Bank in the UK when it put out a notice to customers that it will be banning crypto linked payments and transfers citing the fraud and criminal activity associated with crypto. Chase UK justified this censorship announcement by stating that the bank is keeping its clients money safe and secure. Now it's no surprise to see Chase taking the stance given that Bitcoin threatens its core business as a financial intermediary. With Bitcoin there's no need for Chase to be a middleman and take fees with every transaction. Meanwhile Honda appears to be making moves to accept Bitcoin for payment. The Japanese car giant has entered a partnership with a blockchain payment system called FCF Pay. This partnership will allow customers to use cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to purchase or lease Honda products in lieu of traditional fiat currencies. In the coming years I think companies will continue to be forced to make a decision on how they will approach the growing demand for Bitcoin. Some companies like Honda will benefit from embracing the tech while others like Chase will probably lose ground to competitors that do recognize the benefits that Bitcoin can bring to their business. That's it for the news block your subscribe to coin story so you never miss an episode. This show is for educational purposes and should not be construed as investment advice. Until next time keep stacking.
Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
Fresh update on "2019" discussed on Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
"Suspects arrest in this area in 1999 for driving while intoxicated ABC's Stephanie Ramos reporting Northwest News Time 1220 now our stock charts .com money update and the markets have had pretty rough day today Treasury market upheaval seems to be having the biggest impact on the major indices the Nasdaq right now is down by about 2 % 271 points the S &P 500 and Dow the Dow both losing about one and a half percent that's 65 points down for the S &P 483 points down right now for the Dow Jones Industrial Average with more money news here's Jim Chesco office the good landlords news for a post -Labor Day bump nudged return to office rates to their highest level since the onset of the pandemic the bad office attendance in big cities is still barely half of what it was in 2019 and company get tough measures are proving largely ineffective at boosting that rate much higher most employees go into offices during the middle of the week but floors are sparsely populated on Mondays and Fridays that's your money now and other stocks based around here that are performing poorly today yeah it's not just just one or two it's just about everybody Zillow down by about 6 % t -mobile down 2 % so to is Starbucks down redfin four and a half percent it's a three percent loss day right now for Microsoft media and Nordstrom any positivity yeah just a little bit Boeing is up very slightly right now and penny stock Jones soda which is based in Seattle is up by about five to 20 cents a share your next money update on the way at 1250 delivered now am 1000 FM 97 7 hi -def on 101 5 HD 2 on your smart speaker and streaming at nwnewsradio .com stay connected stay informed
Real Estate Coaching Radio
A highlight from Real Estate Market (Crashing)? Price Reduction Scripts & Systems
"Welcome to Real Estate Coaching Radio, starring award -winning real estate coaches and number one international bestselling authors, Tim and Julie Harris. This is the number one daily radio show for realtors looking for a no BS, authentic, real time coaching experience. What's really working in today's market, how to generate more leads, make more money, and have more time for what you love in your life. And now your hosts, Tim and Julie Harris. And we are back. Now we're going to be really drilling down over the next five podcasts on pricing listings to sell, but also getting price reductions. There's a lot of technique to the things we're going to be sharing with you guys. A lot of scripts, a lot of systems. It's very important that you use the notes that are below. Obviously we try to, I think almost always put all of our notes, right Julie? In the show description below. So scroll down, all the notes are there and we're going to be really getting into the weeds with all of you so that frankly you can start pricing your listings to sell. If you have listings now that are overpriced, then you can get them repositioned on the market so they correctly reflect the market's expectations. That was a script. Did you write it down? Snuck that in on them, didn't you? I did. And when your hunting expires, as all of you will be doing, you're also going to be knowing how to get the prices adjusted accordingly so the properties will sell. So this week is very intense, really focused on pricing properties to sell because it is going to become very, very tricky in many markets. Now I'm going to start out with a little bit of, we need to I think have a common understanding of the difference between value and price. And I'm reading your notes and I see what you're about to talk about so I think this will fit in perfectly. It's a good intro. Right. Well, we'll see. Back to you. Yeah, exactly. So I was thinking about this last night, how to explain. So Julie and I, when we socialize with people and go to parties and just talk with all of you guys, just run across everyone. People make the mistake constantly of saying there's some sort of or alluding to or believing that there's some sort of big price or value erosion that's going on. Value erosion, not price erosion. Value versus price. That's where I'm going with all this. Because back in 2007, 8, and 9, there was value erosion. The values of the properties actually dropped below what people paid for them. So there's a difference between pricing and value. So get this clear in your head and then I think it'll give your mind room to be open to the thoughts that we're going to be sharing with you in a second. So if you have, like I'll give you an example, Julie and I had, let's say if we had a car for sale and let's say we put the car for sale for 50 grand and even though the market tells us that the car is worth 30 grand, like every single comp, every single thing that's out there is telling us that car is not worth 50, it's worth 30, right? You guys with me so far? And then we eventually, in order to get the car sold, we have to adjust the price down to 30. Did we lose 20 grand or did we just finally price the house correctly? Do you guys get the difference? And so what a lot of people are believing is because they have to price their properties correctly that the properties have lost value. No, they didn't. They lost value maybe in your head, right? They didn't actually lose value. The difference between, so for example, if we'd bought that car for 30 grand, let's say, and we were selling it for 15 grand, then yeah, we lost 15 grand. That's like what was happening in 2007, 2008, 2009, well, mostly seven and eight. The definition of a short sale, you're selling it for less than you owe. Well short sale, you're selling it for less than you owe, or exactly, assuming you owe like you just said. So yeah, so that's the whole moral of the story here. So please don't think this is anything like the previous market, which I'm teeing you up perfectly. Exactly. As we have said, pricing is the hot topic all week because it's a big hairy topic. We'll take a look at the factors causing price reductions, what to do from a listing agent's perspective, as well as what to do when you're representing a buyer. And we're going to dive into some price reduction scripts and give you the confidence you need to navigate the changing market. So let's first take a look at what's happening to prices right now. And no, by saying that, we are not talking about the market crashing. Just as Tim said, the market is not crashing, it is simply normalizing. So here are the facts, hot off the presses. Nationwide, one in every 15 listings had a price reduction in the past 30 days. That's about six and a half of active list, six and a half percent of active listings in the country. However, some markets have seen 50 % of active listings get a price reduction in the past 30 days. So let's compare those two. Nationwide, it averages out to six and a half percent of actives got a price reduction last month. But there are many markets that it's quite a bit more severe. But so what this is, when you see this kind of statistic, we've seen this before. Julie and I have been doing this for decades. And what this is kind of a, I don't even want to, I don't want to be overly critical, but this is essentially sellers who have unrealistic expectations as far as what their homes are worth. We call it aspirational pricing. And frankly, this is evidence of agents that don't know how to actually properly price properties. In other words, they're just taking the listing at an elevated price. Maybe they don't know how to go about setting the price correctly in the first place, or maybe they don't want to, they don't have the skill set being blunt to get the property priced correctly in the first place. So when you see these kinds of widespread statistics and especially something like 6%, which is a pretty meaningful number, honestly, when you see numbers like that, that is essentially the market still adjusting to the new reality. That's the sellers adjusting to the new reality. And that's also the agents having to learn how to adjust to the new reality. And then, you know, doctor filling their sellers, you know, learning how to write exactly this, this type of information. When you see these types of statistics, this is 100 % proof that the market is still very much adjusting. Now, also taking the time, you know, take when you're considering all this, what time of year it is, what's the, you know, what's interest rates are doing. And so these types of things in a cyclically adjusting market, the numbers will go up and down pretty radically pretty fast. So just adjust accordingly. This information is as of two days ago. That's right. Now, the five metro areas with the highest percentage of listings that got price cuts, this is the percentage of listings that had a price reduction. When I give you these stats, these percentages, that doesn't mean they're coming down by that percent. That's just the percent of overall actives that had to have a price reduction. So that's Wenatchee, Washington State, Idaho Falls, Idaho, Carson City, Nevada, and Austin, Round Rock area, and Waco, Texas. Those were all in the 50 to 54 percent of active listings came down. Again, that doesn't mean they came down by 50 percent. It just means half of the actives had a price reduction. Now she took that sort of sampling because obviously price reductions were happening all over the country, but she was using that to show the fact that it's happening in these completely different unrelated markets. That's right. So unlike before, you know, when the market was super hot for several years, kind of the whole country moved about the same way. We were all going rapidly up in price. We all had multiple offers basically on anything. All it had to do was be available. Well, now we're seeing markets kind of stretch apart, and what's happening in the ones I just rattled off is different than, say, Florida, which still is pretty strong. So you have to know your actual market. Now, this is all happening, all these price reductions are all happening at the same time that prices are still up by at least 3 percent this year and are expected to end up averaging about 5 percent higher by year's end. This figure shows you that we are normalizing, not crashing. A crash would not have price increases. Okay, so that's worth, we really need to drill down on that. So listen to what Julie just said, be very, very clear in your head. There were no price increases, there were no value increases that were happening, it was value basically, that were happening during 2007, 2008, quite the opposite, right? Properties in some markets dropped by, you know, 40 plus percent. That is not what we're experiencing. Year over year, what Julie just explained to all of you guys, is that in many markets prices went up, values of properties went up by at least 5 percent. So despite what the headlines and all the click -baity things on all the news channels and all the rest of it are leading you to believe about real estate, guess what? If you own a home, it went up by probably at least 5 percent this year. Exactly. Okay, now, remember, again, we're proving the point that we are adjusting and normalizing, not crashing. Remember this, at $52 trillion, the total value of homes in the U .S. is up, get this, 49 percent since before the pandemic. That truly is insane. Yes, 49 percent. So these price adjustments won't be catastrophic to most sellers. We're a very long way away from short sales, so don't go thinking the sky is falling. Okay, so again, worth drilling down. Prices are up by almost 50 percent in the last... It's since 2019. Now what you're seeing now with the price adjustments or the price reductions essentially that many markets are now experiencing, remember that you still had 5 percent increase in value in the last 12 months. So you're looking at properties in many markets that have increased by at least 50 percent since 2019? Yeah, since pre -pandemic. Okay, so that is a substantial massive increase. Now, the value of those properties, there's no reason to believe, and it's incredibly important you're really clear in your head about this, that the values of the homes are going to somehow regress back into say 2019 values. And I read that sometimes from people that are, I don't want to come off overly negative, but they really piss me off because they don't use any real factual information. No, they're only using their thought that, well, you know, prices were going really high in and 2006 5, and so then there was a crash, and since prices have gone up, there must be a crash. That's not based on any underlying factors. It's just basically, well, that's what it did before, that's what it's going to do now. It's basically yo -yo thinking about, you know, there's going to be another bubble that's going to burst. There's no reason to believe that's true. The same people who've been predicting that since, again, 2019, they've been wrong year after year after year after year, and they're going to continue to be wrong because nothing is the same as it was back in 2007. Well, that's why we're facting them, right? Okay, so look at the runway, though. Okay, so a 49 % increase since pre -pandemic, and you know, the average, and not every single listing is having a price reduction, but when they do, they're still only coming down by less than 5 % on average, so you've got that remaining, you know, 44 % left to go before you're even Steven with 2019. There's just so much runway there. Now, are there isolated instances where people refinanced, took a bunch of equity out, didn't have a very big down payment in the first place, and maybe are behind on payment, and that makes them even very, very, very randomly, literally less than, I think it's like 3 .5 % of the market of closings were even short sales. So along those lines, again, you'll have this memorized because that is what you do. Possibly. We'll see. No, she will. You watch, listeners. So what percent of all home inventory is distressed? almost It's like 4%, but it's less than 4 % overall. Which is a record low for what period of time? Forever. Yeah. Literally forever. It is a record low since they started recording it, I think back in the 80s. You remember when all the - And actually, it's gone down. It was a previous low, and it's actually gotten lower in the past quarter. Remember when all the naysayers were saying, well, when the COVID - Forbearances. Forbearances. There was going to be a foreclosure wave. There's one thing after another, after another, after another. Okay. So the forbearance naysayers, there's going to be this awful backup of foreclosures due to forbearances. Well, they also said there would be a silver tsunami when all the baby boomers just had to sell their houses all of a sudden. And they also thought there would be an Airbnb bust. And now the new thing is, as soon as somebody has to make their student loan payments, well, that means they're going to miss their mortgage payments from one drama to the next, but not based on facts, which we like to sprinkle upon you. Again, the reason that we're so adamant about you guys getting these facts and the reason that we spend so much time on this podcast and our coaching program to make sure you have the actual information is because if you operate with bad information, you're going to then pass that bad information along to your customers. You're then going to, you know, it always comes down to the same thing. If you don't believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today, you're not going to take the actions today that would have made tomorrow better than today. In other words, if you believe the sky is falling, you're sure as hell not going to do what you don't want to do when you don't want to do at the highest level, you're not going to learn to price properties correctly. You're not going to learn how to get prices, you know, lower prices on homes. Why would you bother after all tomorrow? It's going to be, you know, some sort of, you know, locust apocalypse, so you're never actually going to make tomorrow better than today. So that's really the reason that you want to purge from your mind all of these naysayers, all of these snake oil salesmen that are trying to sell you into the belief that there's any sort of anything other than frankly, amazing things that are going to happen in the real estate markets. And here's a little foreshadowing, and we're working on a podcast about this. If you look purely at the demographics of what the United States is experiencing over the next 20, 30 years, it's extraordinary and it's going to do nothing but maybe even increase the demand for housing by something like five to seven X. So that's how many home sales and how much new construction is going to have to be built just to meet demand and it's going to be built and that demand will be met and you are going to be a beneficiary of that provided that you are taking the right steps now to, you know, stay relevant in the real estate. That's right. And provided that you make it through this next three to six months because it is going to be more challenging than you're used to. That's why we're talking about price reductions because we've seen, you know, we've gotten texts, we've seen videos online, we've seen stuff on social media where agents were losing their minds over having to do price reductions, hearing about price reductions, having to ask a seller to come down.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "2019" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"Fairfax and in College Park 77 now in Northwest money news on UTOP 10 and 40 past the hour brought to you by pen fed great rates for everyone. Let's keep us costing you more the yield on a 10 -year Treasury has hit a new 15 -year high morning this topping 4 .7 percent fears of rising interest rates are sending the markets sharply lower the Dow is down 420 points now that's one and a quarter percent the S and P 500 is down 62 a one and a half percent loss the Nasdaq's down 233 that is point 1 eight percent cannabis producer Tilray is expanding its beer business New York based Tilray has completed its acquisition of 10 small beer brands from Anheuser -Busch including shock talk and blue point brewing BWI Marshall has been adding more international flights in recent years but the vast majority of international flights here are still at Dulles and that is growing Dulles has added more international flights since 2019 than any other US airport making it the fastest growing international gateway in the u .s. Jeff Clabel news WTOP Jeff thank you 1142 the FDA is out with a warning after an infant died from a probiotic the FDA is now warning hospitals not to give probiotics to fits preterm it's after a baby was killed by bacteria linked to a probiotic there's now an investigation into vivo a with MCT oil a probiotic manufactured by California based infinite health that is now being recalled the company says it's cooperating and has stopped shipping the product probiotics are bacteria eaten for health benefits such as those in yogurt or supplements studies have shown some benefits for infants taking probiotics and guarding against to some diseases Matt Piper CBS News well you've got another chance to become instant an gazillionaire time to play America's favorite jackpot game this is Powerball the Powerball lottery jackpot has grown to an estimated 1 .2 billion dollars after Monday night's drawing without a big winner the prize for Wednesday night's drawing has grown so massive because there have been 33 consecutive drawings since someone won the Powerball jackpot the odds of winning are one in 292 million Jim Criscilla CBS News up ahead on WTOP we'll tell you why now may be a good time to renew your passport it's 1143. Meet Greg. Greg is a scammer he impersonates your bank in text messages emails and phone calls so he can steal your money but Greg is angry angry why is he angry because you went to banksneveraskthat .com and got scammed smart now instead of paying for Greg's Greg's next vacation your money is safely locked away in your bank account poor
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 686:Do Kwons SEC Charges and FTXs Shifting Assets
"Good evening, and welcome to The Crypto Overnight. I'm Nickademus 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 Sunday, October 1st, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight, 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 diving deep into the murky waters of deception, legal turmoil, and the ongoing struggle for financial freedom. DoKwan's courtroom dramas, FTX's questionable asset movements, and the European Central Bank's stance on the digital euro are all on the table. Trust is at a premium, and it's becoming increasingly clear that centralized entities are on shaky ground. Let's get to it. DoKwan, the founder of Terra, a once massive crypto ecosystem, is in hot water. Court documents from the U .S. Securities Exchange Commission reveal that Kwan admitted to faking trading volume. The SEC filing shows a text exchange between DoKwan and Daniel Shin, founder of the payments app Chai. Kwan tells Shin, quote, I can just create fake transactions that look real, which will generate fees. When Shin questions the ethics, Kwan assures him, I won't tell if you won't. Chai partnered with Terra to speed up payments. But the SEC alleges that this partnership was a sham. Terra never replaced Chai's payment systems. Instead, they replicated Chai payments onto the Terraform blockchain to deceive investors. In 2019, Terra announced its partnership with Chai, promising to process millions, if not billions in transaction volume. But the SEC claims that Chai payments did not use the Terraform blockchain. They were made through traditional means. This is a betrayal of trust, a slap in the face to every investor who bought into the Terra ecosystem. And it gets worse. DoKwan's Terra was focused on algorithmic stablecoins and was the second biggest DeFi blockchain after Ethereum. Its native cryptocurrency, Luna, was a top digital asset. But in May 2022, Terra collapsed. This led to a brutal bear market and bankrupted many crypto projects linked to Terra. DoKwan now faces a litany of charges. He was arrested in Montenegro on charges of document forgery. He's been detained indefinitely and is fighting extradition to the US. The SEC has requested his extradition, but his attorneys are pushing back, claiming it would prevent Terraform Labs from presenting a statement during the summary judgment process. Now before we move on, if you're enjoying tonight's deep dives, do me a favor. Hit that like button and turn on notifications. Trust is the currency of our times, and DoKwan's saga reminds us to be cautious. Speaking of caution, let's delve into a recent move that's causing waves. Remember the FTX exploit from last year? Well, the Ether tied to that exploit is on the move again. Let's set the stage. Around 2 ,500 Ether, worth just over $4 million, started moving early Saturday morning. These funds were divided via multiple transactions. A chunk of 700 Ether was transferred using ThorChain router, a cross -chain bridge with a focus on privacy. Another 1 ,200 Ether moved through Railgun, a privacy -focused DeFi wallet. The Ether, worth around $21 million, sitting in the original wallet. The timing on this is interesting. This movement comes just days after FTX founder Sam Beckman -Fried is set to go on trial in the US over fraud and conspiracy charges. Beckman -Fried has pled not guilty, but some former FTX and Alameda Research executives have pled guilty and are expected to testify against him. More on that trial in a bit. So who's behind this? The identity of the exploiter remains a mystery. Last year, accounts tied to FTX and its US affiliate were drained almost immediately after the company filed for bankruptcy and Beckman -Fried stepped down. Shortly after the exploit, 21 ,500 Ether was converted into the stablecoin die. Now let's not forget the broader implications. The market is anticipating the launch of Ethereum futures ETFs. And here we have a significant movement of Ether tied to a high -profile exploit. Interesting timing for the Ether to be on the move, especially with the possibility of those Ether ETFs coming out soon. It's like a pot about ready to boil over. But the heat doesn't stop there. The US government is digging into FTX's asset handling.
Bloomberg Surveillance
Fresh update on "2019" discussed on Bloomberg Surveillance
"At a certain point you know when does this become a real problem? That 10 pounds of weight loss where does that 10 pounds come from? Are you making assumptions of what could happen to the average weight of the passenger? Do you think that's something that actually could happen? Yeah I think according to these voice loss drugs clearly I'm not on them but you know people tend to be on them but if they do lose an average of 10 pounds 175 passengers per narrow body wide bodies are 300 it would be a significant fuel cost savings and it was actually in light of because we cover the airlines the aircraft OEMs like Boeing and the engine guys like GE and RTX and they're having such mega issues building these aircraft it was just a fun way of looking at something that's completely out of their control not having you to do with making a fuselage with spirit that stocks down 45 % just changed its CEO yesterday and the engine manufacturers obviously pride is having a tough time with the contamination in their engine so there's a different angle of looking at something completely out of their JetBlue is struggling as well so let's get to the nuts and bolts of what's happening right now. Are you starting to see limits to the consumer appetite for flying domestically in America we seen that happen now? So it's a matter of that's our debate in Q3 we're gonna see what results have to have to bring we downgraded Southwest Airlines to an underperform in the beginning of August on that structural call that the US domestic consumer is in a tough spot student loans are coming back it's weighing on their savings so that mainline cabin passenger is gonna see some difficult times no pricing is up about 10 % versus 2019 levels we saw Q2 pricing on the mainline cabin down 1 % very different than the story we're seeing in the premium business class cabin very different than transatlantic up 25 % versus 2019 levels so it's a matter of where we you know what we see C &Q3 results John I look at two flights I just ran through the Paris flight which I think at one point was $7 000 even $9 000 in pandemic and all that shocking statistic $2612 business class to Paris out a couple months like when you're planning months out economy used to be $700 even $900 it's now $534 but the ratio is still 4 0 .9 to 1 you pay a premium to fly faro you pay a premium just to be very clear Sheila thank you thanks guys Sheila Kylo of Jefferies on the latest on airlines the coming up in the next hour on Bloomberg TV Ashok barrier of new burger Berman Matt Miskin of John Hancock investment Cameron Dawson of New Edge Wealth to try and navigate our way through some of these bond market issues with a 10 year yield just pulling back from cycle highs your 10 -year cycle high was 470 474 earlier in the session Tom we're back down to about 472 at the moment stay on that folks and particularly global Wall Street Matt Miskin has just a depth coverage of financial of fixed income dynamics just just just just leave Roland it's going back for years you know different different places but he's a real deal I'm laughing that you're saying we're heading back down to 4 .72 I mean if you had said that a week ago to just check I mean obsession highs I'm not criticizing that I'm just saying it just tells you where we sensitive about delicate these things just put him back I'm alright alright good I'm glad he's coming back just a little bit we're negative five zero point five percent live from New at Oppenheimer we focus the power of our thinking on you together we have the opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive future at the Bloomberg new economy forum we help make this possibility a reality by cultivating new connections among global leaders that transcend industries and ideologies because when global leaders work together outcomes benefit all of us learn more at bloombergneweconomy .com when you get your news from Bloomberg you don't just get the story you get the story behind the story how your evie's battery may not be as green as it seems why a decrease in global birth rates could send countries scrambling to increase immigration you get context and context changes how you see things how you change things text changes everything go to bloomberg dot the creating customized plans to help achieve your goals the or of power Oppenheimer thinking is boundless and original listening more closely and investing with the events of over a century of experience creating new opportunities that rely on innovation preserving capital and come from deep insights put the power of Oppenheimer thinking into your investing call an Oppenheimer professional hi everyone al Roker here as a guy with his own catchphrase I appreciate that Smokey's only said only you can prevent wildfires but I'm filling it because there's a lot more to report like when they're parched or windy conditions out there you've got to extra be careful with
Daily Crypto Report
"Prosecutors will call investors & employees in FTX trial." Oct 01, 2023
"It's 8am Eastern, October the 1st, and this is your daily crypto report. Bitcoin is down slightly at $27 ,176, ETH is up slightly at $1 ,685, and Binance Coin is up slightly at $215. While federal prosecutors are planning to call former FTX customers, investors, and employees as witnesses in the trial next week of Sam Bankman -Fried, these witnesses will provide insights into their expectations regarding how FTX would handle their funds and share their interactions with the defendant, shedding light on the purpose of certain statements and actions. The testimony is considered relevant to the trial's key issues, helping to understand how reasonable individuals would interpret the defendant's representations regarding FTX's treatment of customer assets and related matters. While Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on potential changes to Ethereum staking mechanisms in a blog post, discussing various protocols, including account abstraction protocols, EVMs, private mempools, code precompiles, and liquid staking, considering whether they should be integrated into Ethereum's core code or remain on top as separate layers, Buterin emphasized the need to carefully weigh the trade -offs associated with each protocol as they'll evolve over time. Buterin also expressed concerns about the concentration of Ethereum's liquid staking providers, particularly Lido, which controls over 32 % of staked ETH. To address this, he suggested potential protocol changes to further decentralized liquid staking, such as adjusting RocketPole's approach or giving more governance power to a randomly selected committee of small stakers. Those changes aim to reduce centralization in Ethereum's staking ecosystem. While crypto trading platform Mosaic Exchange Limited and its owner have been charged by the CFTC for running a fraudulent digital asset commodity scheme, the scheme involved deceiving investors by falsely claiming that Mosaic had substantial assets under management and offered a highly profitable trading algorithm. In reality, though, these claims were fabricated in the scheme and misappropriated funds from at least 17 individuals in the U .S. and other countries. Some of these misappropriated funds were used for the platform owner's personal expenses. The fraudulent activities took place from February 2019 to June 2021, when Mosaic and its founder Shawn Michael falsely represented their platform's capabilities and partnerships, including claims of ties to BitMEX and Binance, which were untrue. The CFTC called the scheme a virtual house of cards. And finally, crypto venture capital firm Paradigm has accused the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission of attempting to change the law through its case against Binance. In a statement, Paradigm argued that the SEC is using allegations in its complaint to modify regulations without following the proper rulemaking process. The SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance in June alleging multiple securities laws violations. Paradigm contended that the SEC's stance would disrupt established securities law principles and noted that various assets such as gold, silver, and fine art are promoted and sold for profit without being classified as securities. 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.
Demo 1 - NaviLens
Sony Unveils New Earphones and Noise-Cancelling Headphones
"We've long waited for the successor to Sony's awesome noise -canceling WH -1000XM3 headphones, which earned a CNET Editor's Choice Award back in 2019. Credible photos of headphones that appeared to be the Sony WH -1000XM4 appeared on Twitter earlier last month, but it looks like they're a no -show for the time being anyway. While we're waiting, however, the company recently announced that it's bringing out two new wireless headphones. The WF -XB700 is a true wireless headphone in the company's extra bass line. It'll cost $130, while the WH -CH710N, a new noise -canceling over -ear headphone, will cost $200. Both are set to be available for pre -order in April. WF -XB700 extra bass true wireless earbuds with Sony's extra bass technology hold structure. It creates a comfortable ergonomic fit with up to get this nine hours of battery life and an optional charging case delivers an additional nine hours. You can even do a quick charge with it. Ten minutes on the quick charge provides about 60 minutes of music playback. Available in April for pre -order in black and blue, and then of course we have the WH -CH710N. They come with 30 millimeter drivers, artificial intelligence noise canceling, and it can automatically select the most effective noise canceling mode for user surroundings. It also includes dual microphones. It'll kind of help you catch more ambient sounds, up to 35 hours of audio on a single charge, and it automatically selects the most effective noise canceling mode for the user's surroundings. You can get up to 35 hours of audio on a single charge and again it has the quick charge feature that provides 60 minutes of music playback via a 10 minute
Demo 1 - NaviLens
A highlight from Your-Weekly-Tech-Update-EP-133
"Hello, everyone. Welcome to your weekly tech update, the show that explores the newest, coolest, and sometimes mind -boggling side of tech available on the interwebs. I am your host, Ray McNeil. Coming up on the program today, we're talking Skype. They're rolling out their new Meet Now calls, and you don't need to sign up or to install it to use it. Amazon's new Blink Mini is a small indoor camera that allows for two -way audio, motion detection, HD video, and it's only 35 bucks, and will take your mind off of the world and put a smile on your face with this week's moment of joy. That and a whole lot more coming up on today's edition of your weekly tech update, next. There are more video calls going on now more than ever. However, a significant chunk of that action has gone to Zoom, which honestly I had never heard of before a couple of months ago, and not necessarily Skype, who has been the mainstay video chatting service for many years now. Microsoft's product that has been at the center of online voice and video chat since well before smartphones were commonplace is now coming out with a new feature that's rivaling Zoom and the market share that Zoom has captured in its short time. Perhaps too easy with some security and privacy compromises, but Skype is finally ready to fight back with Meet Now. With Meet Now, hosts can create and share free meetings with just three simple clicks. That's according to the company. Even the host doesn't need to have Skype installed. It's all ran from your web browser. You can start the process from its website and then invite people either using a simple link or the share button that's available on the page. If the person you're inviting has Skype installed, then it will automatically open up in the app directly, and if not, then it will open up a new app. We've long waited for the successor to Sony's awesome noise -canceling WH -1000XM3 headphones, which earned a CNET Editor's Choice Award back in 2019. Credible photos of headphones that appeared to be the Sony WH -1000XM4 appeared on Twitter earlier last month, but it looks like they're a no -show for the time being anyway. While we're waiting, however, the company recently announced that it's bringing out two new wireless headphones. The WF -XB700 is a true wireless headphone in the company's extra bass line. It'll cost $130, while the WH -CH710N, a new noise -canceling over -ear headphone, will cost $200. Both are set to be available for pre -order in April. WF -XB700 extra bass true wireless earbuds with Sony's extra bass technology hold structure. It creates a comfortable ergonomic fit with up to get this nine hours of battery life and an optional charging case delivers an additional nine hours. You can even do a quick charge with it. Ten minutes on the quick charge provides about 60 minutes of music playback. Available in April for pre -order in black and blue, and then of course we have the WH -CH710N. They come with 30 millimeter drivers, artificial intelligence noise canceling, and it can automatically select the most effective noise canceling mode for user surroundings. It also includes dual microphones. It'll kind of help you catch more ambient sounds, up to 35 hours of audio on a single charge, and it automatically selects the most effective noise canceling mode for the user's surroundings. You can get up to 35 hours of audio on a single charge and again it has the quick charge feature that provides 60 minutes of music playback via a 10 minute charge. Bluetooth 5 .0 is included with this as well as the standard USB -C charging. This has 30 millimeter drivers, support for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, one touch button access to those digital assistants by the way, and it's going to be available in April for pre -order as well, this one only coming in black for the time being anyway. Having AI agents learn how to play simple video games is an ideal way to test their effectiveness thanks to the ability to measure success via a score. Alphabet's DeepMind designed 57 particular Atari games to serve as a litmus test for its artificial intelligence and established a benchmark for the skills of an average human player. The company's latest system, Agent 57, made a huge leap over previous systems and is the first version of the AI that outperforms the human baseline. In particular, Agent 57 has proven its superhuman skills in Pitfall, Montezuma's Revenge, Solaris, and Skiing, all those games that have been major challenges for other AIs. Now according to MIT's Technology Review, Pitfall and Montezuma's Revenge require the AI to experiment more than usual in order to figure out how to get a better score. Meanwhile, Solaris and Skiing are difficult for AI because there aren't as many indications of success. The AI doesn't know if it's making its right moves for long stretches of time. DeepMind built upon its older AI agents so that Agent 57 could make better decisions regarding exploration and score exploration as well as to optimize the trade -off between short -term and long -term performance in games like Skiing. Technology Review notes that while these results are impressive, AI still has a long way to go. These systems can only figure out one game at a time right now, which it says is at odds with the skills of a human. True versatility, which comes so easily to a human infant, is still far beyond AI's reach. That said, AI is already in use across industries. The lessons learned from Agent 57 could help improve performance even if human -level skills aren't achievable for now.
Bankless
A highlight from ROLLUP: Coinbase Crashes DC | Gary Grilled By Congress | Vitalik Deepfakes
"Miss Wagner is like, yo, MIT version of Gary was pro -blockchain, but SEC Gary is anti -blockchain. And then Richie Torres is like, yo, it's a Pokemon card of security? These people are listening to crypto Twitter. They are like, these are our things. The power of crypto Twitter is like getting into Congress. Well, it's because it's distilled logic. I mean, Bankless Nation, it is the last Friday of September. David, what time is it? It's the Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup Ryan where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless into the frontier this week with a bunch of clips of Gary getting grilled. So everyone, everyone prepare for that one. If you're not listening to this with coffee, because it's too late in the day, well then you should get your popcorn, because that is what you will need. I mean, this is a catharsis, I think, for many of you in this episode. You'll enjoy this very much. Also, crypto was present in Washington this week. Yeah, Coinbase's stand with crypto day was held at Capitol Hill the same day that Gensler was giving testimony in front of Congress. Convenient. What about the timing of that? David, what else we got? After that, we'll talk about pudgy penguins in Walmart landing a huge deal, a ton of distribution for pudgy penguins, also with each toy purchase having an on -chain identity on ZKSync. So we'll talk about that. And then after, also not only are penguins getting identity, but citizens of Buenos Aires perhaps also getting some on -chain presence as well. We'll talk about that. And then, of course, we're going to do the PSA of deepfakes and phishing attacks that are out there. We got a Vitalik deepfake that we want to show you. It's pretty hilarious, but not if you believe it. Notable VC Fred Wilson got phished for 40 NFTs this week. So if Fred Wilson can get phished, so can you. We will talk about this and more. What else we got, Ryan? You know, the usual Bitcoin ETF stuff. ETH might be getting futures. There's a ton to talk about every week. This is a bullish week, I think. I'm declaring it such, David. It is a bullish week. And we got some green candles when we get to the markets. But before we get in, David, we got a message from our friends and sponsors over at Layer Zero. What do they want the folks at home to know? They want you to know that after a year, over a year of combined effort, Layer Zero and Google Cloud have announced their partnership, and they are ready to build the interoperable cross -chain apps of the future. What is Layer Zero? Of course, Layer Zero is a set of smart contracts that are deployed on every single chain. These smart contracts connect to each other. How do they connect to each other? Well, they need some Oracle service in the center to be the chatterboxes, the passing messages between all of the Layer Zero smart contracts across all of the 50 different chains. Google Cloud is that new default Oracle. That is the partnership that they have created. So there is a link in the show notes for you to go explore more if you're a builder who wants to build on Layer Zero. LayerZero .network is also the URL. Well, you know what I want to learn more about this week, David, is markets. Tell me about the old markets. I think, I think, I haven't looked at this yet, but I think we got some green on the week. We got some green, dude. Let's look at the Bitcoin charts first. What's Bitcoin showing us? Some single digit green. Look at that green right on the right. That's your dose of dopamine for this week. It's like, whoo, Bitcoin up 2%, whopping 2%. Started the week at 26 ,600, ending the week at, well, Thursday morning, if you call it the end of the week. It's not the end of the week. 27 ,150, up 2%. Ether price up a little bit more, starting the week at 1660, up 4 .5 % to the current price, excuse me, starting the week at 1560, ending the week at right around 1660, where we are right now. 1660. I mean, it's still low. That is a low price. We are getting excited about very little right now. Yeah. It's up such a small degree, you shouldn't even be excited about this. And yet we are. Yeah, we are. 4 .5 % on the week, I'll tell you. It's better than flat. When's the last time we had a double digit week, man? Double digit up or down? Up. I can't remember either, actually. We've been in the flatlands for so long. It's just like kind of a little bit of a bleed out all the way from 1900. Weren't we over 2000 a few weeks ago? Yeah, we have touched over 2000 in this bear market, but man, it certainly doesn't feel like it. Last time we were at 2K was July. In July, briefly. We weren't at 2K. Yeah, I can't remember July. Well, I was in the mountains. It's been downhill ever since I caught back for the mountains. Yeah, it really was. It's been all downhill since you guys. The only thing you can do, David, is go to the mountains. Bad things happen to Gary Gensler when you go to the mountains. Although, I guess nothing bad happened to him this week. Anyway, I'm skipping too far ahead. We'll have our Gary later in the episode. ETH, Bitcoin, up 2%. Total crypto market cap, $1 .11 trillion. Layer 2 scaling factor, touched 6 % this week, down to 5 .5%. Still at all -time highs. Layer 0. Wait, what touched 6 %? Excuse me, not 6%. Total value loss? 6x. 6x is what I meant. Oh, activity. That's what you like to look at. Yes, layer 2 activity touched 6x of Ethereum, but now it's at 5 .69. Nice. 60 transactions per second, 64 transactions per second. Yeah, that's where we get the 6x. We got more transactions per second left in this tank, I think. Oh, yeah. David, you want to talk about the general markets, like all the TradFi markets? You want to talk about macro really quick, because it's been super confusing to me. It's been super confusing. And then I read this tweet. We're also doing a macro show on Tuesday as well. So a macro show, so talking about the state of macro from a crypto person, so it's a crypto person who understands macro, so I'm really excited for that show. Are you a crypto person that understands macro, David? Do you understand macro? When I have a smarter macro person with me, then yes, I understand macro. My question to you is, does anybody really understand macro, particularly right now? Oh, you mean current snapshot? Definitely not. Yeah, all right. So here's the tweet. Current situation. One, stocks are falling like a recession is coming. Two, oil prices are rising like there's no recession in sight. That's contradictory. Three, interest rates are rising like we have 10 % inflation. Yes, they are. Four, gold is falling like inflation is gone. Five, housing prices are rising like rates are falling. And six, commercial real estate is falling like it's 2008. Nothing adds up here. That's the way I feel about macro right now. It's very confusing. There is a confusing set of signals going on, and it's not adding up in my head. What do you think about this? Yeah, they follow through, and they say it's beginning to feel like a pivot point in sentiment. I don't know if I'm about to say what I think they are meaning by this, but when there's a bunch of confusion, people, I think, brace for something, brace for clarity, and then whatever that clarity is will define sentiment. Where are we going? We don't know. As soon as we find out, we'll know how we feel about it. But we know it's going to be different from here. Different good or different bad? Those are the only two directions. Yeah, I guess that's the reductive take about it. But it's basically like we don't really know. That's why I'm very interested in doing this macro episode next week to see what the newest macro person kind of knows. I will say one thing, though. I think volatility is back on the menu. I think that's what this means. Because when the market doesn't know what direction it's going to go in, then it can kind of lurch in one direction or the other. So weird macro climate right now. On the back of stimulus, on the back of money printing, like what's going on here? And just to be clear about something, we've previously talked about stocks being at all time highs. That's been kind of the theme of the last two months, I would say. Well, so from looking at the SPY, you don't have the chart up, but it has declined by 7 % since July. So the SPY is down 7%, which is more. That goes to the first bullet point. Stocks are falling like a recession is coming up. I don't know. It's down 7%, just doesn't feel like a lot to me. Well, in the trade market, 7 % is a lot historically, but not recently. 7 % in the trade market is actually, that's just like, trade markets are also volatile. OK, well, we'll try to make sense of this, but let's get back to crypto. This is a negative report from JP Morgan, who said, Ethereum's activity post -Shanghai that was the last hard fork back in March, has been disappointing. JP Morgan calling Ethereum's progress disappointing. They've got some reasons for this. While the shift from proof of work to proof of stake meant that the energy consumption from Ethereum collapsed by 99%, the Ethereum supply is shrinking and staking rose sharply by 50 % since the Shanghai upgrade. While that happened, the increase in network activity has been rather disappointing. Ethereum's daily transactions, daily active addresses, and total value locked on DeFi protocols on the network have all experienced declines since the last hard fork. So JP Morgan, their analysts expressing some bearishness here over the last six months or so. Yes. I'm not mad, just disappointed with that activity. My response to that is, who the hell are you? JP Morgan doesn't know how to analyze these things. Well, I don't know. Ethereum post -Shanghai activity, it's just the broader crypto downturn. And also, they're just wrong, JP Morgan, he is wrong. They say layer twos have displayed mixed results. Well, no, TVL and economic activity on layer twos across the board are all up. I don't know where the hell they're getting their data from, but not only is their data wrong, but their analysis is poor. Well, let's go to the actual numbers, Stephen. Layer two beat provides a good source for value locked on layer twos. What are we looking at? At the 180 -day time frame, it's basically flat. It's marginally up, it's basically flat. It's a flat TVL, $10 .5 billion. Activity is up, it's up so much. It's unequivocally up by a lot. I'm disappointed in JP Morgan. Wow. Have you ever been not disappointed with JP Morgan, David? I'm generally disappointed by banking in general. Really? You should start a podcast called Bankless, David, about escaping your bank over time, slowly. I think Vance Spencer put that tweet in perspective as well. Actually, I don't think he was responding to that tweet in particular. But we are. We got some perspective here from Vance Spencer. This is Ethereum, if you chart it against some of the fastest growing tech companies in human history, companies like Alphabet was Google, of course, and Meta or Zoom or Microsoft, and how quickly, over time, it took them to surpass $10 billion in revenue. How long did it take them? It took Ethereum seven years. When charted against these other tech companies, there's only one that did that faster, and that is Google. Yeah. Ethereum really did all of its $10 billion of revenue inside of 2020 to 2023. I mean, so look at this line. It's just kind of like a slope line up. So I mean, doing pretty well, all things considered, JP Morgan. Not disappointing. I'm not disappointed by this. And I'm not disappointed. Also, long -term perspective, not disappointed in the price of ETH over the last seven years either. And we can keep going. Uniswap this week hit 300 million in swaps. 300 unique million trades, swaps, has happened on Uniswap. Uniswap was invented in 2019. 300 million swaps since 2019. Is that disappointing? Is that disappointing? I'm not disappointed by that in the slightest. I feel great about that. Maintain my disappointment about JP Morgan. You know, I think it's part of a broader crypto sentiment, and I've seen a lot of takes just in general in news, but even in financial analyst news like JP Morgan research, that sort of thing. It comes back down to this, David. Mainstream thinks that crypto is dead, again, like always. This always happens. And this is what makes this a buying opportunity, as with previous cycles. And when crypto 10x's the next cycle, don't let anybody tell you you didn't earn it. Because if you're buying here, when everyone is saying crypto is dead, it's never coming back. That they're disappointed. That's how you earn. It's so easy. The signals are just being laid at our feet right now. They really are. I tweeted something like that out, and somebody responded with this life cycle. What are we looking at here? Yeah, just like the cycle of the bull bear market. So in the top of the bull market, some crypto friend of you will tell you, a bankless listener, you're so lucky. I wish that I bought two. And then the crypto market will go down and be like, you're an idiot. I told you crypto was a scam. Yeah, so especially when they say the words disappointing, it's such an emotional word. It's kind of just playing into the readership. I don't know if JP Morgan is about that game. I mean, we're in the stage of the cycle where everyone thinks you're an idiot. And they told you it was a scam. And you can't talk about crypto at your family events or parties because you're just the crypto moron who knows nothing. And ha, ha, ha, SPF, FTX, that's so stupid. Scams, frauds, NFTs are such a joke. Well, granted, some of those things are actually true. Sure, sure. But if you're still in crypto and you know why you're here. And you're no longer buying the scams because you can identify them. And then you'll swing back to like, I am a genius. I am amazing. I am lucky. Or third parties will say you're lucky when that happens and you'll feel like a genius. You've been chewing glass for three years, but you know, you got lucky, though. You got lucky. How about the Bitcoin ETF, David? Here's a tweet from James Seyfert. What's this about? He just says that the SEC has come out super early and delayed the ARK Invest and 21 shares Bitcoin ETF filing. There wasn't a decision due until November 11th. And typically up until recently, the SEC has always gone up right up until the buzzer. But they decided to delay their decision on this earlier than usual. You know why? Partially? It's some speculation. It's because the government's about to shut down. The U .S. government's about to shut down. That's on Monday, right? On Monday? Yeah. So apparently if by Sunday night, this Sunday night, Congress doesn't reach some sort of compromise resolution, whatever agreement to keep the government running, then it shuts down yet again. I mean, how many times have we been through this? And so this is the SEC just getting ahead of that so that the stuff doesn't expire while the government shut down. And I guess, I don't know what would happen if the government shut down and these deadlines were missed. But maybe they would de facto be approved. I think that could be how it works. Is this some sort of pseudo oracle about how the SEC thinks that if we do go for a shutdown, we'll get shut down all the way until at least November 11th? I have no idea. I have no idea what this could mean. I do know this is good news. So Congress, both Democrats and Republican lawmakers, sent a letter to Gary Gensler pleading that he approve a spot Bitcoin ETF.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from A Dame Trade Deep Dive With Ben Thompson, Plus Seth Meyers and Million-Dollar Picks
"Coming up, Dame gets traded. Million dollar pick Seth Meyers, it's all next. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Get in on the football action right from the opening kickoff with America's number one sports book. The app is safe, secure, easy to use. FanDuel always has exclusive offers. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. FanDuel has lots of ways to play, like the spread, money line, over -unders, team totals, player props, so much more. Jump into the action at any time during the game with live betting. Combine multiple bets from the same game in a same game parlay. Download the FanDuel sports book app today. Make every moment more of this football season. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit TheRinger .com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of this episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit TheRinger .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. I just use this. Here's something every football fan should know. You can get everything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything because you can't get the dream flex for your fantasy team delivered with Uber Eats. But Tex -Mex, yeah, great pass protection, can't get it. Great pizza selection, oh yeah. While they can't help on the field, you can get pretty much everything else you need to watch the game delivered with Uber Eats. So this season, get anything, almost, almost anything for game day by ordering on the Uber Eats app. Uber Eats, official on -demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. I'll call in select markets and 21 plus to order. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did the big chill. It was very, very exciting. I have Kyle Brandt coming on Monday's podcast. I'm just gonna tell you the movie now because it is gonna be the best moment of your weekend if you spent two hours watching this classic. We're doing Toy Soldiers. It really brings everything possible to the table. So if you wanna watch it ahead of time, there it is. That podcast is going up Monday night. If you wanna hear stuff about the debate, we have Tara Paul and Mary's podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win. That reacted to it as well as the press box with Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. So there you go. Our debate coverage has been on point. Also, higher learning. Van and Rachel had Larry Elder on this weekend. It made a lot of noise, man. That podcast is great. I hope you check that out as well. Hope you're checking out theringer .com. And on this podcast, gonna talk about the dame trade at the top. We're gonna bring in Ben Thompson from the Techery newsletter, which he's been on this podcast I think four weeks ago. And he's a huge Bucks fan. He's gonna give the Bucks fan side of things. We're gonna do million dollar picks. And then old friend Seth Meyers talking about a whole bunch of stuff. So really good podcast. It's all next. First, our friends from Pro Jam. What's up? All right, I'm taping this on Thursday afternoon. Normally when there's a big MBA trade, I always do the emergency trade reaction right after the podcast. But we just put up a podcast on Tuesday. So I decided to play it a little differently this time. I wanted a little distance, I wanted to listen to stuff, read stuff, and try to form some big picture opinions coming out of this. So I have four smaller ones, then one big one. First one, I thought Portland did an incredible job with this trade. I really liked this trade, especially everyone was trying to bully them in June and July about, oh, you got to take Miami's offer. You just got to. It's where he wants to go. It's the only offer you're going to get. And guess what? They waited. They played it perfectly. They stared Miami down, and they got a much better deal. First of all, they get the Drew Holiday piece that they can flip into a bunch out of their stuff, which we'll talk about in one second. I love the DeAndre Ayton gamble. As you know, on this podcast, I am a big DeAndre Ayton guy. Not in the sense of I'm the biggest fan of his in the world, but I'm a fan of the asset. I just think I love the valued assets, no matter what it is. Whatever market we're talking about, DeAndre Ayton, 18 and 10 for his career, 60 % field goals percentage, 25 years old. He's played in 45 playoff games. He played four rounds in the 2021 finals. Last year, he got his ass kicked by Jokic. Oh, sorry. Like, that never happens. And Phoenix just sold on him, which I can't wait to talk about. But just from a Portland standpoint, they not only get Ayton in whatever they get for holiday, they get the 29 first, they get the two swaps, and they dump Nurkic. Nurkic hasn't had a healthy start to finish all the way through the playoffs here since 2018, which I'm positive was a long time ago. He's basically 12 and 8. He's, you know, a 50 % shooter. I made a list of the top 30 centers. I encourage you to do this at home, because what's more fun than making lists of NBA centers? I can't imagine anything. I made a list of who I thought were the best assets of the center position for talent, contract, everything. He was 29th on my list. The only person I had ahead of him who's technically a starter, unless you start talking about the Detroit or Charlotte guys, was Zubats on the Clippers. I thought he was the 29th best center asset in the league. And Phoenix, you know, just quickly to go to them, they're trying to win this year. They got worse. They turned Ayton's money into Nurkic and Grayson Allen and Nasir Little. Grayson Allen, we already know with him, he can't play in playoff series. We saw him 22. We saw it last year. I heard and read in some places like that, I got two rotation players. Did they? Is Nurkic a playoff rotation player? Is Grayson Allen a playoff rotation player? Because I'm positive he's not. So for the same money that they were spending on Ayton, they got three guys that I don't think are going to help them. In 25, the money comes down a little bit to 23 million just for Nurkic and Little, which is 7 million less than Ayton. And then in 26, that money goes up to 25 .5. But I don't understand what Phoenix was doing. Why not wait to see if Ayton clicks with Vogel? Vogel has such a good history with centers. He rejuvenated Dwight Howard on the 2020 Lakers. He basically created Roy Hibbert's career in 2013 with the defense verticality thing. I thought he was going to do a good job with Ayton. I'm stunned that they gave up on him. I'm almost waiting for one of those, now they tell us stories when, you know, that's where Brian Curtis calls them, where like a week after something happens, there's this kind of notebook dump where it's like, here's seven terrible DeAndre Ayton stories. So maybe that'll happen. But for Phoenix just to be like, cool, we locked this down, man. We got Nurkic. You're trying to win the title. You have KD and Booker and Beal. And like, what are you guys doing? Anyway, from Portland's standpoint, I love the Ayton thing. I love that they didn't get bullied. And I know they're going to turn Drew Holliday into something. So this to me was at least an A minus for them, for where they were two months ago, where Dave's like, I want to go to Miami. That's it. And if you don't trade me there, that's kind of fucked up. And they made this work as it got reported that, uh, I think in the athletic, that he expanded his list to Brooklyn and to Milwaukee in the last two weeks. And that's what Portland was waiting on. You know, they were banking on the fact that he's a competitive dude. He's one of the best 75 pairs ever. He wanted a situation settled. So, you know, you wait, you wait, you wait, they expand the list and then you go. Uh, there's a Drew Holliday piece to this. That's awesome. He becomes a contender prize. I wouldn't call this a Drew Holliday sweepstakes. I reserved sweepstakes for the superstars, but it's a mini sweepstakes. This is somebody that could have a huge impact on the playoff race. You know, not only the usual suspects, everybody's talking about Boston, ironically, Miami is a really good fit for him. And in some ways, um, I'm a little more scared of them with Miami than Dame in some ways, especially at a much cheaper contract with giving up less and keeping some of their assets. Philly, if they could pull it off, they have to be in there in Golden State, Minnesota. I think I have to mention Sacramento, I think is a team that if they could figure out how to get Drew without giving up their core, which is basically Keegan Murray and Sabonis and Fox, like that's, you know, could Davion Mitchell be in that trade with some, with a salary and some picks, who knows. The team that I love for Drew Holliday is OKC. I have OKC, you know, I started doing my MBA research for the over -under spot and I haven't landed on a number for them yet, but to me, they feel like a high forties team with Chet and with the growth of their young guys. And if you just like, let's say they traded Lou Dort and a bunch of their picks, maybe two firsts and two of their lesser picks or three firsts and a second, whatever it is. And they just say, fuck it. And they get Drew and you put him with Giddy and SGA and Jalen fucking awesome Williams and Chet Holmgren and all these other dudes they have, that might be a top three team in the West. I mean, that, that's starting to give me some early 2010s OKC vibes. So where he goes is going to be important. I just feel like there was so much Drew Holliday slander the last couple of days. You know, he's one of my favorite players. Even Haralabob, who was the chairman of the board of the Drew Holliday fan club for years and would have the benefit dinners there and, you know, just did a lot of yeoman's work on that front. And even he was like, yeah, yeah, Dame's better than Drew. That trade makes sense for Milwaukee. I was hurt, Haralabob. I was 100 % hurt by that. But you know, Drew got his ass kicked by Jimmy Butler in the playoffs last year. I get it. It happens. Jimmy was unbelievable. I feel like he would have kicked anybody's ass. By the way, why is Drew Holliday guarding Jimmy Butler? That speaks more to some of the issues with Milwaukee. He was never supposed to be a point guard and a creator. I think he was always better as an off -the -ball guy. We saw that with Rondo and New Orleans and just in general. I want to see him with a point guard. I want to see him just being unleashed, not having the ball a lot, just worrying about hitting threes, being an occasional, you know, make -shit -happen guy and being like the third or fourth best guy on a team without having the offensive responsibility to have. All their half court issues got blamed on him for the last couple of years. And I get it. They weren't like an awesome half -court team, even the other one in the finals, but I really value that dude. I had him, even I did the trade value list in August and I had him 37th and I had Dame 23rd. I think he's one of the best 30 players in the league still. He's 33 years old, which, you know, I'm going to talk in a second about when guards hit their mid -30s, but just in general, I think he's a real asset. If he goes to a team like the Celtics and they can keep Derek White and Tatum and Brown in the center, it's like, look out, man. So little mini sweepstakes, rarely do we get the trade, but then we still get another asset to talk about. Thank you for everyone involved in the trade. And then the fourth small point is just that, you know, not rocket science, Milwaukee bought some Giannis time here. They have one of the best 20 players of all time. They were staring down the barrel of a situation that was not good. I was talking about it on this podcast in late June and early July. I thought he was going to put them on the clock. I thought Mark Lasry selling his stake was a really bad sign for all of this because that dude is smart. As I laid out in June, that guy is really smart. And if he's feeling like, you know what, it's time for me to sell my buck stock, that makes me nervous. And then all the stuff that Giannis said and did, which I thought he did really fairly and really smartly. And I think that dude's about titles and that's it. And I know we say that about players, but I think in his case, I don't think he cares about, you know, what's my legacy, how do I compare against Dirk DeWhisky, any of that stuff. I just think he wants more rings. I mean, think about the guys who have won two rings out of the best 35 guys on my list of my pyramid. Those are all guys in my top 35 that won multiple wings. You go to the one -ring side, Jerry West, Oscar, Moses, Dirk, Jokic, Giannis, Pettit, Garnett, Kawhi, Rick Barry. That's the list he's on now. I certainly don't think he's looking at that list going, I got to get away from these guys, but it's a slightly different list. I think when you win multiple rings in multiple situations, it elevates you in a certain way. I think he fundamentally understands that at least a little bit. I want to be the best player since LeBron James. I think that's a thing that he wants. How am I going to do that? I need more rings. I need more finals trips. He knew from last year and maybe even the Boston series that they just weren't good enough. Whether this trade is going to be the thing that propels them, we'll find out, but he's been in the league 10 years, two MVPs, five first teams, two second teams, and now we have this little two -year window. Kawhi and the Raptors was a one -year window. This is a two -year window, I feel like. With Giannis, he's got two years left in his deals. So does Lopez. Middleton has two in a player option. Dame's got two, and then this crazy $120 million player option extension thingy that he has that just keeps going and going. It's probably two years. There's a world where this could go terribly this season, at least for what the expectations are, and then maybe it becomes Kawhi, Raptors. Maybe Giannis is like, you know what? That didn't work. Trade me. And the Bucks, who have no picks left and no future, they look at it next summer, and they go, all right. We tried it. Giannis, what can we get for you? Dame, what can we get? And they just do a reboot, rehaul. Remember, they won in 2021, which just takes so much pressure out of this. It's so much different than the Clippers situation, where they went all in on Kawhi and Paul George. They give up all those picks and SGA, and they've gotten nothing out of it. They haven't even made the finals. So it's got to happen. I think they at least probably have to make the finals. If they get bounced in round two, do I think Giannis is going to stay because they made this Dame -Mower trade? Probably not. So that leads to the big question, is how good of a trade was this? So there's a big picture angle on Dame, and it's going to sound negative, but I really don't want it to sound negative because I think Dame, I voted for him for NBA Top 75. I think he's been one of the best guards in the last 15 years. I think there's a ton of great things you can say, and there's a chance that he goes to Milwaukee, and this thing is fucking awesome. I know any Celtic fan I've talked to, including Isaiah, who's helping produce this podcast today, the Giannis -Dame pick and roll is just terrifying. Other than Jokic and Murray, it's going to be the single most unstoppable offensive play in the league. It is. We are conceding that point. The spot Dame is in right now, big picture -wise, it's weird. He's a superstar, but he's not, and we've seen guys like this before. I judge superstars by, do you have the resume statistically, and is your team succeeding consistently at a certain level? You can't totally say that about Dame. He's never been on a 55 -win team. He's missed the playoffs completely four times in 11 years. He said three first -round exits. He made the Final Four once in 2019, which was really lucky because Golden State and Houston were the two best teams, and then they got smoked. He's never been on a true contender ever. Instinctively, you go, well, that's not his fault. Who's he played with? Well, he played with LaMarcus Aldridge and CJ McCollum and a couple other guys, but not really anybody. The reason I'm putting this up is there's a success element that he has not had yet that for somebody with his resume is actually kind of unusual. I went and I looked up how many guards in the history of the league averaged 22 points a game for their career and played at least 700 games. I thought the list would be like 20. I didn't know. I didn't know what I was walking into. Only I think 75 guys have averaged 22 a game. So I went and I looked up the list, and it was 10 guys, 700 games, 22 a game for their career. There were some guys who came close like David Thompson, who I think is one of the best guards I've seen in the last 45 years, but had a short career and had some drug issues. He didn't make it. He didn't play enough games. Pete Maravich, 24 .2 points a game, but he didn't play enough games. Kyrie hasn't played enough games yet. Bradley Beale is five games away. I'm actually kind of glad the cutoff's at 700 so we don't have to talk about him. And then Mitchell and Trey Young aren't there yet. There's only 10 guys that made it, and the 10 guys are all fucking awesome. And again, I mentioned this in the context of Dame, who we think he is versus the success he's had. So the 10 guys, Michael Jordan, 30 .1, Jerry West, 27 .1, Allen Averson, 26 .7, George Gervin, 26 .2, Oscar Robertson, 25 .7, Kobe, 25 .0, Harden, 24 .7, Curry, 24 .6, Wade, 22, barely made it, and Russ, 22 .4, and then Dame is at 25 again. All right, what does he not have that those other guys have? Well, MJ, don't need to talk about him. Don't need to talk about Jerry West, who's the freaking logo. Allen Averson, pretty good comparison, right? Big stats, really memorable player, but not a ton of success. Here's the difference. Averson made the finals once. He won an MVP. Dame has done neither of those things. George Gervin was the best scoring guard of the 70s. He made two final fours. He had some bad luck. He really, in 79, really should have came close. And some of it's on him, right? He could have come through. Bobby Dandridge is the one that ended up coming through for the Bullets. They lose. But two final fours, he had four top five MVP finishes, five first teams, four second teams. He was just unassailably the best guard in the league until MJ. Oscar Robertson, don't need to go through him, but he won a ring and an MVP. Kobe, five rings and an MVP. Eleven first teams for Kobe, by the way. James Harden, three final fours, an MVP, six top five MVP finishes, six first team MBAs. And even though Harden has never made the finals as the best guy, he made it with OKC as the sixth man, you could build a contender around Harden. We saw it. We haven't really seen it with Dame. I think that's a fair thing to bring up. Curry, four rings, two MVPs, you know, the Curry thing. Dwayne Wade, three rings, two top five MVPs, two first teams, three second teams. He's more in the Dame waters a little bit, but he had the 2006 finals and he was the second best guy with LeBron on those heat teams. And then Westbrook, who you would say, well, Dame had a better career than Westbrook. Did he? Westbrook made the finals in 2012. He was second best guy on that team. Almost made the finals in 2016. He won an MVP. He had two first teams and five second teams. It's at least like a real argument. And I think when you look at Dame, he only had that one 2019 round three, got bounced. He's only had one top five MVP finish. He's only had one first team MBA and four second team MBAs. Really, really good top 75 career. But the piece that's missing is, have you been on a really good team? Have you made a real run at it? Which is why, you know, I think this Milwaukee trade is so much fun. This is his real chance. I get nervous about a couple things with this trade. One is that, you know, if you look at the 33 and older guards who average 22 points a game in a season. Jordan did it twice. Curry did it twice. Still going. Kobe did it three times. Jerry West twice. Sam Jones once. Hal Greer once. That's the entire list. Now the NBA is different. We have more three -pointers now. It's easier to score. Scoring is the easiest it's ever been. Guys can play at a longer age. So I'm not ruling out Dane being good for the next three years. But just pointing out, history is saying, be a little nervous. In general with guards, like Chris Paul, we saw from age 35 to 36 to 37, like it just dropped. But that's two years older than Dane. Maybe it's fine. I just worry about guards. We have not a lot of instances with guards in their mid -30s of them either peaking as players or being able to sustain whatever success they had during their prime. It always starts to go down with really no exceptions, except for Steph Curry. He's the only non -exception. So if your case is Dane's as good as Steph Curry, or Dane can be as potent as Steph Curry on a winning team, like, you know, Steph Curry is better than Dane, but I'm not going to argue that he couldn't do a lot of the stuff that Curry did in Golden State. The bigger issue for me, the age I'm definitely worried about. Dane has not been healthy the last couple of years, and we have not seen him play nine straight months at playoff basketball with a big bullseye on his back. Everybody coming after you, you're the best team. We haven't seen him do that ever, much less than the last couple of seasons. So can he stay up? Can he stay healthy? That's one thing. The defense with Dane just got kind of swept under the rug the last couple days, and I don't really understand it because there's five categories of defensive player I feel like. There's excellent, there's good, there's average, there's not so good, and then there's bad. And I think Dane's a bad defender. I think the stats back it up. Like, his defensive rating last year was 245 out of the guards. He's the 245th guard for defensive rating. You know, 117 .4 individual defensive rating is 483 overall. Portland's team's always defensively, it was the Achilles heel for them. Partly because of Dane, because he couldn't guard anybody. He's too small. And, you know, think about what we saw from the playoffs the last couple years. I think about the 2020 bubble Celtics playoffs, not infrequently, because I think that team had a chance to potentially win a title. What happened? Everyone hunted Kemba Walker. It was hunting season. It's like, where is he? Got to get a switch. Got to get Kemba Walker guarding somebody who's bigger, or got to beat him off the dribble, and it just became a hunt session with him. And basically, he got played out of the league. He's not in the league anymore. You know, we had this with Isaiah Thomas, too, in the mid -2010s. I think it's been an issue with Kyrie Irving. The Celtics certainly went at him in the playoff series with Brooklyn a couple years ago. Curry, you saw, who I think is a better defender than people give him credit for, but the And he's a much better defender than Dame is. Jordan Poole is somebody that got hunted in playoff series recently. Chris Paul, obviously, is a big one. Jalen Brunson, remember what the Heat did to him? Mitchell, when he was on Utah, this was a huge issue. And then Trae Young, obviously. My fear with Dame is he's a DH, and I think in Portland, part of the reasons he was able to put up the stats he did was because he wasn't playing defense, right? It was just, how many points can I score? My team isn't very good, and I'm just going to do my thing. He's an incredible offensive player. But how much of a trade -off is the defense, right? Well, you think, all right, well, Milwaukee, they're really good defensively. They'll be able to protect him. Here's the team. Giannis, Dame, Lopez, Portis, Middleton, Conaton, Beauchamp, Crowder. Who's guarding Trae Young on this team? Who's guarding Jason Tatum? Here's a partial list of guys that I don't think this team will be able to guard this season. Devin Booker, Tatum, Butler, Trae Young, Kyrie, Curry. Who's going to be chasing Curry around the screens? Dame lowered? Good luck. SGA, Luca, Mitchell, Murray, Edwards, Brunson, Ja, Garland, Fox, Halburn. Are they going to be able to cover Derek White? I don't know. The way this team is constructed, they are not going to have the ability to guard other guards at all, which means they're just going to have to be in a shooting match with them, right? It's going to be not much different than what's going to happen with Phoenix, where they're just literally going to have to outscore the other team. I've just watched too much playoff basketball over the last couple years, where it's like, if you have that weak link on defense, and you're playing a team that's smart enough, they're going to go after that weak link. Like, think about them against the Lakers, right? The Lakers figure their crunch time. Let's say they make the finals. It's Milwaukee and the Lakers, and Lakers crunch time. They're going to have LeBron and Davis and Austin Reeves and, I don't know, a shooter and a point guard, whatever. All they're going to be doing is trying to find where Dame is on the court and going after him. What about when they play Boston? Boston puts out White and Brogdon and Tatum and Brown and a center, and all they're going to be doing is trying to make sure Dame is covering somebody who has the ball who's now torturing him. I think it's a real problem for them. And what's funny is they gave up Drew's defense and, you know, they, what they gave up on defense, which is significant, and they gained an offense, it might end up just being a wash and they might just be a different version of the same team where they still have a huge flaw. It's just on the other end of the court. I'm just shocked that nobody brought up the defense. I agree he's an amazing offensive player and what's cool about this trade and what I'm excited about as a basketball fan is, can he go up a level? Right? A lot of these stats he put up, especially the last couple years. They didn't mean anything. They were, he was on bad teams. Like, who cares? Ultimately, Bradley Beal scored 30 points a game on the Wizards. Who cares? I think most really good offensive players, if they're on a bad team, can get between 25 and 30 a night. Can you do it nine months in a row? Can you do it when you're getting hunted on defense all over the place? How much can Milwaukee protect him? And what does he have in the tank at age 33 with 900 plus games on the O 'Dominor already? I'm still afraid of the Bucks, but people have, like, FanDuel had them as best odds in basketball and I think most people feel like they're the favorite now. I don't feel like there's a favorite. I think you can go through every team. Boston, I could, I'm scared of Porzingis. What's going to happen with Jalen Brown out there? He has contracts. Can Peyton Pritchard, all these different things. Philly, God only knows. Miami, they're unquestionably worse. Yeah, Milwaukee is going to be really good, but depending where Holiday lands and how this all plays out, I just think it's still wide open. And the other piece, so if you're just talking Boston, Miami, Tatum kills Milwaukee. I have no idea why. Boston is kind of built to at least stay with Dame and, you know, Derek White is about as good of a person you're going to have to try to keep Dame in check, at least. And Boston's done a really good job of guarding Giannis over the years. They don't have Grant Williams this year, but I just don't think, I think there's as many ways this goes wrong as it goes right, I guess would be my final thought on this because for what they gave up, especially with that 29 unprotected and the two swaps and, you know, they are all in on this team. And you know my theory, when you go all in on a team, you better think you can win. Not positive, but it's an awesome trade. It really is. It makes the league so much more fun. Dame and Giannis together. I'm going to enjoy watching Portland. I still have my eating stock. Watching Phoenix fans slowly realize that Derkiszna isn't the answer is going to be fun and then we'll see where Drew Holliday goes. So really fun trade. We're going to talk about it a little bit more with Die Hard Bucks fan, Ben Thompson in one second. Let's take a break.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Ministry of Evangelism
"Welcome to the Heart for God podcast. With many years of experience pastoring and helping to start churches, Dr. Jim Townsley has some practical and biblical advice that can be a great help to you and your ministry. On this podcast, Dr. Townsley and other guests with special expertise cover a variety of topics. His goal is to help you lead your church to be a healthy, strong, and balanced ministry, and for your family to be happy, healthy, and living for the Lord. Welcome to the podcast today. I'm glad that you joined us. I have with me here Brother Matt Barber, and he is an evangelist. He's been at our church since Sunday. This is now Wednesday, so he's had several opportunities to speak to us and preach the Word of God. Matt, it's good to have you with us this morning. Good to be here. It's a pleasure. So I want you to just say a little bit about your background, who you are, your family, what God has called you to do, and where you were before. Well, I was raised in a pastor's home. I had great opportunities to hear the gospel. I got saved as a child. When I was 16, the Lord finally got a hold of my heart, and I surrendered to him, and that's when I felt called to preach. I went on to Bible college. I went to Baptist College of Ministry up in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, back in the early days of the college there, and that's where I met my wife. So a lot of good things happened in those days. And then our first ministry was in Woodridge, Illinois, where I went there as an assistant pastor. So that's in the Chicago area? Yep, that's right, southwest suburbs of Chicago. And within six months, I found myself the pastor of the church, and we stayed there for 13 years. And you have family? Yes, sir. Yep. So my wife, Chelsea, and then we have five children, and so the Lord's blessed us richly. And the years at Woodridge were wonderful. We learned a lot. The church grew. It had been through a lot, and we were kind of in a re -establishing, rebuilding phase at the church. And then in 2018 and 2019, I began to feel the Lord stirring my heart towards evangelism, and that's where I felt called originally. And by 2021, the Lord finally gave us the green light, and we stepped out by faith. And so we've been traveling full -time now the last two years. So stepping out by faith is no small exaggeration, because for an evangelist, to get started, people don't know you, they don't know your name. So how does that all come about? How do you end up getting meetings? Well, that's a good question. When I first announced it to our church, they were shocked that we were moving on, but I felt that the church was ready for another hand at the till, so to speak. The church was established, and I guess they thought that I was going out into evangelism by popular demand, and that was not the case. I didn't have anything on the schedule, and I was just trusting the Lord. I expected to be working full -time or part -time as we got meetings lined up, but God and His mercy just allowed the meetings to come in. And they didn't come in all at once, but the Lord stayed ahead of us by three or four weeks or a month or two, and He just filled up our year. We found ourselves traveling two or three weeks a month, plus Sundays and Wednesdays here and there, different places that first year. This second year has been a lot more busy. We spent the whole summer just packed all the way through. We're out west and got to see some beautiful country. But the best thing is we've been seeing God's blessing and seeing God just confirm the step of faith with meetings and with fruit. Dr. Darrell Bock So you're traveling with your family. So you've got a pole -behind trailer, and you've got seven people in that thing. How do you live in that? David Jones Well, you know, the Lord already provided the Ford Excursion. That's right. It's a 2002 Excursion. It's the gas kind, the gas guzzler, but we already had the Excursion, and when the Lord was stirring us up to go, of course, the first question is, can we do this? And the first thought is, no, we can't do this. This is impossible. But then we began to look into it, and we found some pole -behind travel trailer options that would work for our family. In fact, we only found one option big enough that I could actually haul with our truck. And so it's got several slide -outs, and it has a lot of roomy space for the kids to sleep. I say roomy in relative terms, but it works for us. It's tight, but we've been doing fine the last couple of years. Dr. Darrell Bock So you've been a pastor. Now you're traveling as an evangelist. There's got to be a pretty good perspective you have. What is the difference in what are some of the things that people might be interested in, the difference between being a pastor and being on the road as an evangelist? David Jones Well, there's some stark differences, and I guess just going back to the root of it is there are two different gifts in the Bible. We have them listed in Ephesians, Chapter 4. Of course, you have the foundational gifts of the apostles and prophets. Those are no more because the foundation has been laid. But then it goes on to mention evangelists and then pastors and teachers, and I think pastor -teacher is kind of the one idea of pastoring and teaching a flock. So what is the evangelist? Well, if you think about it in the order of events, before you have a church, you have to have gospel preaching so people can be saved so you can have a church, right? So evangelist, an the word evangelist comes from the word evangel or gospel. So an evangelist preaches the gospel, but all of us do that, right? But it's a special gifting that focuses on the gospel. So as an evangelist, I think God gives a special desire, burden, boldness, or even I think also clarity in preaching the gospel so that people can understand. And that's not something to boast of, it's just something that God begins to reveal what your strengths are, what his giftings are. So evangelism is a pioneering gift. Oftentimes evangelists will plant churches, but that's not always the case. My older brother Nathan is a pastor. He planted a church. He would not call himself an evangelist, but he planted a church. So God can use different gifts for different things. I was an evangelist, but I was pastoring for 13 years. But the whole time, I knew I was an evangelist who was trying really hard to be a pastor. It's hard to explain that, but I knew that. But I'm thankful for that background so I could understand the ins and outs of being a pastor and how a church works. But an evangelist is a pioneering gift. You lay the foundation. But an evangelist can also be a restorative gift. I think of Paul. Obviously Paul was an apostle, but if you look at the way he traveled, he was trailblazing. And that's not something just an apostle can do. There were others who did that. In fact, when Paul and Barnabas split up, Barnabas took Mark, and he went off in a different direction doing the same thing that Paul was doing. So there were many who were traveling around in an itinerant way, preaching and laying new foundations through church planting. But then Paul continuously came back and had a desire to circle back and establish and strengthen the churches that he had been a part of. Well, that's itinerant work. I think in America we see a lot of the typical evangelist who travels itinerantly, preaches revival meetings. But that's not unfounded. There's a basis for that in Scripture. I just think the evangelist is more than a revival man. An evangelist can plant churches. An evangelist can go to the mission field. But I think there is a desire in evangelists to not only plant or lay a foundation, but then to be used of God to establish or to even bring an outside perspective that can help a church. And the pastor is there day in, day out. God uses that outside perspective and that special outside gifting to complement the pastor and to help the church grow. Dr. Darrell Bock So what would you say your goal is? As you go from church to church, what is your purpose and goal? What do you feel you want to accomplish by doing that? Dr. Mark Bock Well, a lot of evangelists focus on the word revival, and that's a good word. It's actually more of an Old Testament word, although we see the concept in the New Testament as well. But basically the way I look at it is churches need to thrive and new churches need to be started. My role in that would be to preach the gospel so folks can be saved. But then if I'm going back through established churches, then my goal is to see churches restored, revived to a place where they can grow again. And obviously individuals in that church being, to use another word, quickened. David talked about that. He says, quicken thou me according to thy word. And I think the evangelist can be used of the Lord to have God's power to open eyes, to quicken, to revitalize a church so they can grow. Not that he brings revival with him. Not that he has anything better than the pastor has. But it's a different gifting that complements the work of the pastor. Dr. Darrell Bock So a different train of thought here. From the perspective of a pastor, having an evangelist come into your church, how can a pastor best prepare to have an evangelist come, and how can he take care of him while he is there? Well, I mean, going back to Ephesians 4, they're called the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church, right? So the pastor, I think people see that clearly, the pastor is a gift to a church. If you have a pastor, you have a gift. God has gifted and blessed your church. But I think sometimes pastors forget that the evangelist is also a gift to the church. And there are many pastors now who aren't having evangelists for various reasons. And I would say they're robbing their church from a gift that God wants to give them. Not because the evangelist is so special, because it's a gift God designed for the health of the church. So knowing, seeing it as a gift that God has established, make room for it, you know, promote it.
The Voicebot Podcast
A highlight from Soapbox Labs Founder and Ireland's AI Ambassador Patricia Scanlon - Voicebot Podcast Ep 351
"This is episode 351 of the Voicebot Podcast. My guest today is Patricia Scanlon, founder of Soapbox Labs and Ireland's AI ambassador. Welcome back, Voicebot Nation. This is Brett Kinsella, your host of the Voicebot Podcast. Each week for over six years, I brought you conversations with the innovators shaping the future of conversational AI, generative AI, and synthetic media. Today, I have the privilege of welcoming back to the podcast, Patricia Scanlon, for the third time. Scanlon first joined me in 2019 for episode 129 and then returned in April 2021 for episode 206. She is back for 2023, so I guess we're on a two -year cycle. Soapbox Labs is the leader in automated speech recognition for children, and this has made the company an important source of enabling technologies. Speech recognition systems are almost exclusively trained on data from adult speakers, and they just don't work very well with children's voices due to the different timbre, immaturity, prosody, different speech patterns. Scanlon was a university professor and researcher when she first recognized this problem and that it would hold children back from adopting voice assistants, and she set out to fill the technology gap. It's a great story. It's really become important work as well. The technology is now powering applications to help children learn to read, speak, comprehend better, and to assist teachers in assessment and developing customized learning plans. Scanlon and I break this all down, how it's evolving and accelerating as educators rush to adopt new tools to better serve students in our post -pandemic world. We also chat about Scanlon's role as Ireland's AI ambassador, the EUAI Act, in educating the public about AI. I know you're really going to like this one. Next up, speech recognition for kids. It's the transformation of learning and AI in the public sphere. Let's get started. Chris Scanlon, welcome to the VoiceBot podcast. Thanks, Brett. Thanks for being here. I should say welcome back. I think it's been like almost four, three or four years since you've been here. Pre -pandemic. That's all I remember. Yes, it was. So like 2019. So it's got to be four years now. A lot has happened in the world since then. Not the least of which, the pandemic, but lots happened in your business, too. And I really felt like in 2019, your business was really taking off and it's only accelerated since then. So why don't we start there? Actually, I think this would be really good to level set. I mean, we're friends. We've known each other a long time, but I'm not sure everybody knows the story. And you started working on this issue of speech recognition for children a long time ago, and that led to the founding of Soapbox Labs. So why don't you give people just sort of a quick summary of that? Yeah, sure. So I'm an engineer. I have a Ph .D. in speech recognition, AI, as you know, the voice AI space we're now calling it. So I've been in space a very long time and I'd worked across academia, I'd worked across industry, I'd worked at big tech where, you know, we were doing speech recognition for years and I was back in 2013 when I was actually observing my own daughter interacting with, you know, apps. It was the iPad era, you know, app millionaires, do you remember that? And noticing, you know, I was giving my daughter educational apps and services and getting her to play like pre -literacy stuff. She wasn't even four at the time. And I really just noticed that, one, they had no way of assessing whether she was actually able to recall or pronounce sounds and words. And then when I dug into it, it was like, oh, it's no speech tech for kids. It's actually, okay, here's speech tech, let's see if it works for kids. And the more I dug into it, it's like, it really doesn't work for kids, therefore there's nothing available for education and literacy and language learning. And it was kind of like that light bulb moment ago and I'd spent my whole career working in the area of adult speech recognition. And I still had all my colleagues and none of us, you know, that we'd focus very solely on a problem and just viewed kids as just, I don't know, they're slightly different, and voices a little squeaky or something. And then the more you dug in, go, oh no, they're fundamentally very different physically, behaviorally, language wise, and all of this culminated into something that required a bespoke proprietary solution for kids. So that was the path I went on from 2013 onwards. Well, and I think it's super interesting too, because you think about it, it's sometimes it's the thing right in front of you that's the hardest to recognize. And didn't you see it until you had this sort of unique moment because of the iPad, because children were using it, because there are all these apps coming out. And if we think about speech recognition, part of it too is reinforced by the fact that all the corpora, all the data was adult human voices. There really wasn't anything for kids that ended at scale, correct? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the whole adage of, you know, don't work with children and animals. It's like, you know, it's kind of like this joke we often use inside because it's really difficult. You know, it's so easy to accumulate large volumes of data from adults in any application field. But, you know, there are difficulties, challenges. You can't incentivize children the same way as you can incentivize an adult. You can't, you know, these days there are more data protections around COPPA in the EU and elsewhere in the world. You know, and it was just a case of, you know, that's not easy to come by. It's really, really hard to build this. Kids are different. It was just, there were so many challenges. And to be honest, if I'd known all the challenges ahead of us, I don't know if I would have wandered in there as confidently as I did in 2013, you know. But it has been really rewarding because, you know, it took a lot of learning and patience on all our parts to get this right. Okay. And I do want to get into sort of like the business and sort of the use cases and the value and stuff like that in just a minute. But I think it might be interesting just to like talk about this idea of speech recognition and like what is state of the art for speech recognition? We've seen a lot of changes in that space over the last couple of years. I mean, and you just think about, you know, whisper coming out and seamless from meta, OpenAI's whisper and seamless from meta. But like, maybe just break down very simply the fundamental elements of speech recognition when you're thinking about this as a researcher and building a system for recognition, and then maybe differentiate between the adults and children, because I'm wondering, is it really just, you just swap out the data set? Because I think it's more than that. Yeah, it's more than that. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you think about it, you know, the old approach for speech recognition was like you had an acoustic model, you build models of what the sounds, the small components make up speech, right? And they're called phonemes. There's like 40, 50 of them depending on your dialect. And then once you figured out what the speech kind of sounds like, then you'd feed it into a language model, which kind of uses the language structures and the prediction of what was most likely said, right? The expectation of what was said. And we hear a lot about language models now. As people are beginning to understand what a language, it predicts what you most likely said based on what the population usually says. And that's kind of like the older approach. The newer approach is this end to end approach where you put in the audio and then, you know, it does the whole thing in one go and you have the transcriptions of what was said and it does this end to end matching. That's more the newer version of it. And that's what most people are employing now. And that's fine. And that works great. And again, it's always interesting to me when, you know, engineers and technology and scientists never go about something, you know, sometimes you've got to think about the use case and work back to whether that's the right solution or not. When you think about it, kids, you know, they probably, their language is more like Yoda than it is another adult, you know, especially in the early, you know, they literally flip sound, you know, sounds and then they lisp and they underpronounce and they over punctuate and they elongate and they literally just don't follow the line. And they change their behavior rapidly, even the same child every couple of months is changing their language, right, as they learn. And all that kind of, you know, compounds a lot when you think about how traditional speech recognition systems are built. Even the new approach, right, end to end, it has an expectation of what is being said and it leans quite heavily on that prediction. And that was the big difference in speech technology from 15, 10, 15 years ago versus what we've seen in the last seven or eight years versus what we're seeing now, right, is that language modeling really took off in the last 10 years. And that's where a lot of the acceleration and performance happened. It wasn't really around the acoustics and what it was just, and that's when we started seeing Google Home and Alexa and all those start to perform pretty well because they were beginning to predict what was most somebody in their room, their kitchen was most likely trying to, what music they were trying to play or whatever. And then same with the end to end systems, we're leaning quite heavily and then large language models, we're going to scrape the entire internet, we're going to start predicting what's most likely said, and then you get a five -year -old who just like blurts out something all muddled up and just starts messing with the system that was never designed for that. And you think about people with English as a second language kind of struggle with these things too. You often hear people saying that, it doesn't work as well for them because they're not speaking in a very predictable, predicted way, and therefore it starts to break down. So we had to come at this not just from a data problem, but also in how we build it to get the best response for children. Right, because the prediction model being very important there, if children are using a slightly different speech pattern, maybe not following the grammatical rules as strictly as I'd say adult humans are conditioned to do. That's interesting. Now you've mentioned end to end a couple of times, and maybe it'd be useful for people to understand that, the ASR, NLU being separate together and how you think about that. And also how you think about that changes it because this whole idea of actually having additional context before you make the transcription prediction.
Dennis Prager Podcasts
A highlight from Meaner
"Hi everybody, welcome to The Dennis Prager Show. There are a couple of articles, interestingly, at the same time on a question that is worth discussing. And that is, David Brooks of the New York Times had a long piece in the Atlantic and there was another one before that and also in the Atlantic as it happens. Which is on the left but the subject is, the thesis may be on the left but the subject is not left or right. And the subject is, are Americans becoming meaner? Have you thought about that? Does that strike you as a phenomenon that's taking place? For example, the number of people kicked off airplanes for rowdy behavior, for screaming, shouting, cursing, is much more than it was in the recent past. Yeah, I think people are becoming meaner. You think people are becoming meaner? I think there are lots of reasons for that. Yeah, well that's the issue. So there are two issues. Are people becoming meaner? And if so, what would the reasons be? And sense I it too. The ease with which I see people on the road flipping off other drivers, for example, especially younger people, though I think the phenomenon is more widespread. You know, I've traveled, as many of you know, I've been to 130 countries. I've traveled abroad every year of my life since I was 18, except for 20, was it 20, 21? 20. Or 20, 20? 20, 20. 20, 20. I even went, yeah, I even went to East Europe in 2021. It was not easy to travel on. So I had developed a certain sense, and it may be completely erroneous, I don't claim that it's infallible, but I did develop a certain sense of the world's friendliest people. And I've always included Americans on that list, and very many Americans remain, of course, quite friendly. But there's a sense of tension out there, and it's hard to put one's finger on it. I'll tell you one thing that may be related and may not be, because there was yet another article that I was reading, and that is with regard to service by the airplane or airline industry, that they're shifting as much as possible to artificial intelligence chats, which I find, personally, I find useless. Some airlines have abandoned human interaction completely, which is, by the way, another subject that I will cover. I doubt many listeners know this, but the only example I remember in my life of being for government intervention as opposed to non -intervention with regard to business was the airline industry. It was done, I believe, under Ronald Reagan, and I did not believe… Oh, it was Jimmy Carter, yeah? Well, at least it shows that I wasn't partisan in my outlook. But of course, the conservatives supported it, and I totally understand why. You don't want to regulate industry. But I remember thinking, if the airlines start competing solely on price, then I don't know how the excellence of the airlines will not be diminished. Do you ever see, for example, do you see… I don't watch TV, so are there airline ads on TV? Are you aware? You know, Fly American, Fly Delta? You don't watch TV either. Zach, you live in front of the television. Right, so are there airline ads, Fly Delta, Fly American? Yes. There are? That's fascinating. I wonder why, because in so many cases you have no choice. I mean, those of you listening in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Twin Cities, if you don't fly Delta, essentially you drive to a city that you can have some options for. seats So the got crampier. They no longer serve meals. It's very, very hard to get somebody on first try if you call in to the airline, and that's because everything is devoted to the bottom line. Now, I don't lose perspective. I know how lucky I am that I fly first class, and my height I have essentially no choice. But I was on that… when was it on? Which airline? Oh, JetBlue, yes. I flew JetBlue from Fort Lauderdale to L .A. Saturday night. And room the in the first row, which has always had a lot of rooms, the bulkhead in first class, it was a little more than the somewhat roomier seats in coach. And the flight attendant was very open. She said, oh yeah, they reconfigured the plane, so there's just less room in the seats. This was first class. Because you make more money if you sell more seats. It's obvious. So, back to the issue of the meanness, and the many articles about it. The question is why, if it is happening, and if it is, that's a very, very bad sign in America. How America got mean is the article. And it begins here, in a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self -referential world. his So, theory is they're not taught to be an ethical human being. Well, ethical is not the same as nice. You could be not nice and ethical. So, he calls it morally or inarticulate, self -referential world. Over the past eight years or so, I've been obsessed with two questions. The first is why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide, but other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don't have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren't married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 % in 2019 from 29 % in 1990, a record high 25 % of 40 -year -old Americans have never been married. So, one out of four Americans 40 years old have never been married. I've reported on that. These are data that I have given you over the course of the past year. The percentage of high school students who report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness shot up from 26 % in 2009 to 44 % in 2021. Do you remember in high school having persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness? No. I was talking to the usual teen. No, the usual teenage angst, of course, but this is persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. Yeah, I don't think we were atypical in that way. My second question is why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking to a restaurant owner. That's exactly whom to talk to, restaurant owners. He's right, back in a moment. Natural disasters, airline cancellations and runway near misses, supply chain issues, inflation, rising interest rates and sky high government debt. This is Dennis Prager for AmFed Coin and Bullion. There's a lot in the news about what consumers cannot control. So, let's talk about what you can control. You can control how you choose to invest and protect your wealth. That's why I choose to do business with Nick Grovitch and his company AmFed Coin and Bullion. They pay time to own tangible assets like gold, silver and platinum with over 41 years experience and tens of thousands of satisfied clients. Nick will help you make informed decisions and show you smart choices which have been proven winners time and time again. AmFed Coin and Bullion will sell you the right types of precious metals to get the maximum value for your money. Take control of your investments like I did. Call Nick and his team at AmFed Coin and Bullion at 800 -221 -7694. Americanfederal .com. Americanfederal .com.
The Bad Crypto Podcast
A highlight from Crypto Kingpins: The War Between SBF and CZ
"It's been almost one year since FTX collapsed and created a horrific ripple effect in the crypto industry. Sam Bankman -Fried and Chengpeng Zhao have become key players in this incident, and a new podcast goes behind the scenes to tell about exactly what took place. With SBF's trial ramping up as we speak, we're pleased to welcome Tom Wright, one of the creators of the new Crypto Kingpins podcast to the show, to share some insights. So let's go ahead and get into it today on our episode number 697 of the Bad Crypto Podcast. Five, four, three, two, one, go. Who's bad? Well, what do you know? Once again, it's the Bad Crypto Podcast, the show for the crypto curious and crypto serious. We had a week off because I was traveling en France, and was Travis keynoting at a crypto event in Manila. He was the thriller in Manila. And how was it, Trev? I tell you what, you know, I think I maybe made a quote of this before. Somebody said, go where you're celebrated, not where you're tolerated. And I do think in Puerto Rico sometimes it's like, you know, the natives tolerate, they don't really like the gringos, but they tolerate them. And then there's some people that'll throw hate. So, but in the Philippines, oh my God, they are so open and welcome and kind. And like, hello, sir, how can I help you, sir? Like just most lovable people, probably that I've ever encountered in the world. Thailand, the same, very nice people. Not a lot of crime in these places. I think maybe the Buddhist nature of that. And they're like, oh, you know, and it was so nice, very nice. And the keynote was great. They had me kick off the whole conference. So the founder came up, Dr. Donald Lin, he came up, did a little thing. And boom, then they had me kick off the keynote. And I think it was one of the better ones that I've done. I think it'll be up on YouTube here shortly and we'll share the link when that comes available. I had a few people come up and tell me it was one of the best keynotes they've ever seen. So I was like, ah, you've not seen very many keynotes. Perfect answer. Well, I'm sure you did a fantastic job and represented the Republic of Bad Cryptopia. So, you know, it's hard to believe that it's been a year since the dominoes started falling. You know, Luna was first, then FTX and Three Arrows, and then Celsius. And it's just been, it's gonna be a bear market anyway, but boy, the downward pressure exerted by these, you know, horrible black swan incidents have made it a really, really bad bear market. And of course, we've been here with you guys throughout it all. We've not abandoned you. We've not turned into bears. It was like a kick to the ass, a nudge, an elbow to your face, and then a kick to the crotch. And here we are. And the bear markets can be - Here we are. Here we go, sweetie. It was fun, fun times. Crypto goes up, crypto goes down. Or as our next guest would say, number go up. You mentioned that book right there. So we're gonna have a great conversation here with maybe my long lost relative, Tom Wright, who's been doing, who's an investigative journalist, gonna talk about what happened with FTX and SBF and CZ. And he's got his own podcast around that, multiple topics or multiple episodes. So you're gonna want to tune in. This is a pretty good interview, Mr. Joel Kopp. I think so. Let's let the people decide as they listen now. Unless you're living under a rock, you have heard the names Sam Bankman -Fried and Chengpeng Zhao, or CZ, of Binance. And you've heard about the fall of FTX. Well, Sam Bankman -Fried's big trial for basically making off with countless billions of dollars is coming up shortly. Scam bank man fraud, right? That's the guy. We have a guy with us today who is the co -founder of Project Brazen, a journalism -focused content studio. He's a New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer finalist. And his name is quite similar to Travis Wright's. His name is Tom Wright. We're talking, it's two T Wright's here today. There's two TWs here today. And Tom, welcome to the Bad Crypto Podcast. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, tell us, just kind of give us a little more meat on the bones of your background and how that led you to this new podcast called Crypto Kingpins. Well, I was at the Wall Street Journal for about 20 years, Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal in 2019 after writing a book called Billion Dollar Whale, which is about the one MDB scandal. That's the scandal where a bunch of money was taken out of a sovereign wealth fund in Asia and used to make films like The Wolf of Wall Street and for all these guys to party on this fraudster Joe Lowe's tab. Clearly people like Paris Hilton and big actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and others. And then the guy who I wrote the book with, Bradley Hope and I quit the journal and set up this company Project Brazen. And what we do is we make podcasts and we also write magazine articles and other things, books as well, that we use as the basis for adaptation into TV and film. So that's Project Brazen, that's a business. And our latest podcast is Crypto Kingpins, which we've done in conjunction with USG Audio, which is Universal's audio. And that just started rolling out last week and the episodes are running weekly on Tuesdays. And it's about the huge rivalry between Changpeng Zhao, who you mentioned of Binance, and Sam Bankman -Fried of FTX and how that rivalry played out and how it led to the downfall of SPF. And we went based on exclusive access to CZ himself. There was some interesting stuff that was going down with that. A lot of personality clashes and then just like, oh, CZ is gonna come in and save the day. Oh no, he's not. Because it looked like he got some, he was feeling the heebie jeebies. He was looking at some stuff and going, whoa, we better get rid of all of my FTT because this ain't working. And so this is great. We're talking about some of the big crypto frauds, right? That's what you've done. You know, actually, since Joel and I have not done this show as regularly here in the last couple of weeks because of travel, a documentary just came out about Ruja Igniktova called The Crypto Queen on 2BTV and I was in there talking about that. So I'm featured on that. So it's like, it seems like there's a lot of stuff going on right now and I'll put that in the show notes if you guys wanna watch The Crypto Queen documentary. But this is fascinating. There's so many bad actors in crypto. Hopefully we can get past this and only the good people remain in crypto. The fraudsters are kicked out. Hopefully all the good people haven't left and are chasing dreams in AI now. So hopefully there's still some good foundations here in the crypto space. Well, we got into this podcast because I'm based here in Singapore and for a long time, CZ was based here. And what he was hoping to do was get a license from the Singapore government. I mean, a lot of people were here. Do Kwan of Terra Luna was here. Carl Davis was here. The Three Arrows guys were here. Their yacht Much Wow that they bought, I think was supposed to be in the marina here but never made it, as you said. A lot of people getting washed out of the system. But anyway, I got to know CZ because he was living down in this area called Sentosa Cove which is a lot like Miami. You know, it's big mansions with a marina. And at that time, now what a lot of people do know about is what happened last November, which you just alluded to, which is when CZ decided to sell his tokens and that caused a world of pain for Sam Bagman Frieden FTX, right? But what people don't really understand is the degree to which CZ and SPF had interacted over time. People know that the Binance was one of the big first investors in FTX back in the early days. They took a 25 million stake for 20 % of FTX. But Sam really looked up to CZ. Obviously CZ and Binance go back to 2017 and Sam didn't set up FTX until a couple years later. And we show in the podcast how CZ first met Sam when Sam invited him to this party in an aquarium in Singapore in 2019. And he was just a trader, one of many traders. I don't think he was a VIP trader, but just a trader nonetheless on Binance. And so that's really when the story begins and that's how we start the podcast by showing that relationship and how it evolves and then all of the stuff in between that initial meeting and then what happened last November, which was what we call the kill shot. So he kind of went from being a trader to becoming a traitor. We're gonna talk about some of that political stuff that he did down the road, which was really crazy. It's like you look at some of this stuff, Joel, and I go, man, anybody else was doing some of this stuff where they hadn't have donated so much money to the political parties? There's no way that you get taken out of a Bahamas prison and then immediately brought to America and then released on a first class flight to fly back home to go be with your mommy and daddy if you've done this amount of fraud. So there's so many different nuances to this story. I can't wait to get into this with you. Well, the most amazing thing about that is he was released on a $250 million bail, which was I think the biggest ever bail in American pretrial history. But was it really? It wasn't really like they didn't actually pay that. No, their house is not worth $250 million. I didn't quite understand that it was backed by their house, but that was the, I think they judged him a very low flight risk based on how recognizable he is. Yeah, did they think that house would be a collector's item someday or something? With a future value of this home, yeah, that's crazy. So do this for us. When everything went down, kind of set the stage for what happened that day when this story broke. How much money were we actually talking about? How many people were impacted? And just how far did the ripples extend? Well, I think it's November the 2nd is when this CoinDesk article comes out, which basically says, look, the Alameda, which was Sam's hedge fund, FTX's hedge fund, its financial situation isn't all that it looks like because somebody inside the company leaked these documents to CoinDesk. And they showed that they were heavily reliant on FTT tokens, which were basically a cryptocurrency that Sam had made up and bought himself to prop up the value. And then if you took those out, they were about almost a half of the total assets of the hedge fund. And so at that point, CZ is pacing in his penthouse in Dubai where he left Singapore where I got to know him and he moved to Dubai.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from DAIM - The Investment Advisor Dedicated to Crypto
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey team, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation, BitGet, one of the world's leading copy trading cryptocurrency exchanges, yes indeed. What happens if you've got the funds to invest but you don't have the time to keep track of the market? You still want to make smart money moves? What do you do? Well, copy trading is a popular choice for beginner traders. You can shorten your learning curve by uncovering tips and strategies from more experienced traders. BitGet's copy trading platform has over 80 ,000 elite traders to choose from and 380 ,000 followers just like yourself who are already using the BitGet copy trading platform as a potential passive income stream. All it takes is one click, you can subscribe to an elite profitable strategist, set your limits, automate your orders and monitor their trades. I've got some links in the show notes below, one link will take you through to the BitGet sign up page, give you a VIP discount. So learn all about it for yourself, thanks to BitGet. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Brian Courchene. Brian is the founder of the Newport Beach based DAIM. I believe it's one of the first US registered investment advisors dedicated to crypto. I will learn more about this today. Welcome to the show, Brian. Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. Glad to be here. Glad to have you here, Brian. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. Big, good if you could please introduce yourself, I really love to hear a little bit about your personal and professional backstory and the lead up to founding DAIM. Yeah, yeah. So we're here in the United States in California, specifically in Newport Beach. And where I come from in the background is I got my start on Wall Street, actually on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I got with a guy and started writing paper tickets and backing up their floor traders. And then I went on to be a trader in the pit there on the options side. So I was there for 13 months. And then from there, I worked at different broker dealers in New York City, specifically as a vol sales specialist. And that was great. And in 2014, I came across Bitcoin on my own research. October, I made an allocation to it. It was the first one. And from then on, I was kind of the go -to guy. Maybe nobody had a position on the floor, nobody had a position in the building. And I was a guy that people came to when they had questions about the space and this grew and grew and grew. And then in 2017, in the early part of the year, pre -ICO run -up, I had realized that there was a need for a properly licensed advisor and asset manager in the space. Everything that was out there was self -directed. Coinbase, for example, you go on Coinbase, it's all up to you to move your own money, decide what to buy, when and how, and people just needed a human help to this. And so what I realized was that there was also a larger allocation that people wanted to make to the space and they wanted to do it with someone that maybe had some kind of licensing that they could fall back on or recourse. And so I left the firm that I was working at in New York City and moved here to Newport Beach to start building this business to be the first of its kind licensed registered investment advisor in the United States to advise and manage assets for individuals. And so as fast track as that sounded, as simple as it was, it was a bit more of a challenge than that at the time when we were dealing with the regulators and getting the business approved, it took us into 2018 and for people who know prices, the price of Bitcoin had come off from the all -time highs in 2017. January 1st, it was $13 ,500. And then by the time we got into May, it was sub $10 ,000. And so the regulators kicked back a little bit saying they didn't want to license the first of its kind advisor in the space. That was kind of defeating because I'd spent quite a bit of money in my own Bitcoin to build this and get it going. But I didn't stop there. And I basically made a case with them saying, look, you got to approve this business. There's nothing like it out there that can actually help people. And I'm probably the most qualified thing you can get right now. I had the Series 4, which is an options principle. I had the Series 24, which is a compliance officer. I had owned Bitcoin again since 2014. I had the Series 65 and I said, people need help in this space. And we ended up getting the license. It was actually the next day after that phone call. May 31st, 2018. And since then now, yeah, we advise and manage crypto positions for individuals in the United States and corporations. Yeah, fantastic. So DAIM, of course, just stands for Digital Asset Investment Management. You say then that you are helping individuals with their crypto positions and allocations and maybe even their decision making. Just talk us through a little bit more about what that means, Brian. Who are the kind of different target markets or customer segments that your firm services? Yeah, so a typical client for us is generally a business owner in the United States, quite busy with what he's got going on, but wants to have an allocation to the space. Generally, something much larger than a few thousand bucks or 10 grand that somebody would on typical a exchange, Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, they want to make a larger allocation, maybe something in the hundreds of thousands or even millions to the space. And so they get with us. Things look very familiar from kind of an onboarding standpoint to what their traditional investment advisor might look like. And then we have the license check where they can look us up on the SEC's website. And then we take them through a new client profile where we get to learn a little bit about and them we can then go with them about, okay, this is the allocation we think you should make. Maybe sometimes we've got to walk them back from being too big. And then this is the portfolio we want to put you in. And then from there, it leads to usually a transfer of some sorts from like a traditional investment management firm, Schwab, Fidelity, stuff like that. So we handle the transfer, the funds land, and then we put in place our model portfolio, which is our best thesis on the space. And then we manage their assets according to that. And we actually run that across all of our discretionary clients. So our clients, not only do they get an advisor and a manager sitting on top with a license, but also a portfolio that gets professionally managed, kind of like a fund. The difference is that we run a flat fee and we don't add the performance fee on top of it. And so from there, once they're onboarded and invested, they get 24 seven view access into the account. They get regular statements. If it's a taxable account here in the United States, we work on things like tax loss harvesting. Should that be needed? 10 99 beneficiaries. And then we go into the tax advantage accounts. So we can do things like IRAs, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP IRAs, Roth 401ks. And then we even do a corporate 401k where a business can put in place a plan for their employees that gives them the ability to have up to 10 % in pure Bitcoin alongside traditional mutual funds. And this is something actually we're really excited about coming out of like a pilot program. And it's something we want to expand into market. Yeah, I mean, but to jump into their first thing, Brian, I guess, yeah, the idea of having a even a small allocation into people's 401k funds would be obviously a good thing for Bitcoin and presumably a good thing for individuals that do have Bitcoin in their 401ks if over time Bitcoin does appreciate. But do you see, is there a demand for this and you can see this growing over time? Yeah, so the 401k market is quite large. The addressable market is just massive and there's just nothing servicing really alternative investments. And that's where Bitcoin comes into being kind of like a liquid easier alternative investment instead of something like real estate or VC funds. And so when we put the plan out and we went and looked for pilots for this, we thought that it was going to come from mostly crypto native companies or tech startups. But what we found was quite different. We found that interest came from traditional businesses, law firms, construction companies. And when we put the plan in place, when you look at like who wants to participate and who elects for Bitcoin and how much, you actually see it's kind of the crowd that's over 40 and professional and people that you wouldn't think would be so technology native, but it's people that kind of understand like you got to take a little bit of risk and Bitcoin's been around for a while and why not go for that? Because it actually does improve the Sharpe ratio of these portfolios. And so, yeah, it's been surprising to us, which is actually a good thing, because eventually the people that are in the younger generations that are in tech startup or crypto events will get older. They'll have more money in their 401Ks and eventually they'll have the option when they're ready to participate in this. Yeah, very well said. So you said also, Brian, that you almost manage like kind of like a fund, which is DAIM's, I guess, crypto portfolio thesis. Right. So that's correct. I wonder how much of that you're prepared to talk about in terms of, I guess, what that portfolio fund breakdown in terms of crypto assets would look like. And it's notoriously hard, obviously, to beat Bitcoin just with a buy and hold strategy over a kind of long time zone. What's your approach to trying to, I guess, beat the market on behalf of your clients? Yeah, I can talk about this quite a bit. So on the structure side of it, it's set up as SMA here in the United States. Separately managed accounts. So all of our clients actually have their own accounts and the assets are not co -mingled, but we do manage them with an overlay. And that way we can get the trades done and rebalancing as needed. And the great thing about that is it gets back to us being liquid at any time, unlike having a lockup period with a fund. And so when we have that structure, then we move into being able to manage these assets quite easily and then offer our clients the liquidity that's needed. And then as the thesis, when I first started the business and we were running our model portfolio back in 2018, it was Bitcoin only. And we looked at the space as we want to have low turnover. We don't want to incur a lot of trading fees. We don't want to incur a lot of taxes in these accounts, but we also understand that being long crypto in itself is the best way to get multiples on your return. And then when you go to allocate away from Bitcoin and go to seek alpha, you got to see if you're going to have a strategic outperformance. And then what seems easy to say now, in the beginning of 2020, we had done our research on Ethereum and the upgrades that were to come, and we decided to make a 20 % allocation to Ethereum at that time from the book, which worked out really well for us. And it got to a point to where we've allocated away and Bitcoin shrunk to be a little less 60 % of our portfolio. And then we allow these assets to take course. We look at everything from a fundamental standpoint. When we do use technicals, it's really on just deploying and pulling out of positions. And so at the position we're at now, I should back up. Last year, we had closed out a majority of the Ethereum position into the upgrade and went into cash for a while, which helped us through a bit of the downturn last year and gave us capital to start redeploying at the beginning of this year. And so in our search for alpha, we haven't quite found what we like outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. So we redeployed into Bitcoin, balanced the book 90 % Bitcoin, 10 % ETH. And now we're looking to make some strategic allocations away from both of those as we see us kind of being in the trough zone here, coming out of the bear market and entering a bull market. Yeah, fascinating. And it's interesting, Brian, that you say it's very difficult to find compelling crypto asset allocations outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I suppose being so heavily overweight Bitcoin at the moment looking forward, I suppose that is probably due to the two big catalysts, two big narratives that are around Bitcoin at the moment. I'm talking, of course, of the fourth Bitcoin halving coming around March, April next year. And of course, the BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin application. So yeah, I'd love to understand just how you think about those two data points and perhaps their potential to make Bitcoin interesting again. Yeah. And there's something to touch on, too. What you started off with is looking at all the other investments outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so I'll hop into that in the second half of this answer. But when it comes to the halving and the BlackRock ETF, the halving is an event that's always on the radar. And that has tend to seem price appreciation somewhat after the event. And this stuff has become well known. But what really changed was seeing BlackRock come into the space. And that was further affirmation to us that we are entering a bull market. And there are some very big players that think that there's going to be severe demand and drastic price increases in the space. And so that's another data set to us that says, okay, we don't want to be in cash anymore. We do need to be invested even though we cannot find something at the moment outside of Bitcoin and ETH. We at least want to participate in the market and be in Bitcoin because the narrative can change very quickly in this space. And so it comes to things like this, too. If you look at like key figureheads in the space and their price predictions, you got Arthur Hayes at $70 ,000. Guy Kiyosaki at $100 ,000. You've got Novogratz at $500 ,000. Kathy Woods is at $1 million. I think she might have revised her to like $1 .3 million, but the end of 2023. And so that narrative, micro strategy, acquiring more, there's just little things on the back end. And then you could see something drastic happening. And you got to be ready for that. In the next month, there could be some sort of approval for one of the Bitcoin ETFs. If that doesn't happen in January, there's actually talk that maybe multiple Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States could get approved all at once. You have things that maybe Gary Gensler gets recalled. Like these events could happen. What we think is that the bad events have already happened. We went through that last year. We went with that with Luna. We had FTX and we had Celsius. The bad actors have been weeded out. And so any kind of regulatory stuff that comes in, we think won't have that drastic of an impact. We saw XRP do well in its case. And we think that the setup for new news and better news is on the horizon. And then you look at the liquidity on it. It's something that can vacuum very quickly to the upside. And then all that takes is the news agencies to just flip and go from doom and gloom to price appreciation. And it will show in Google and it will start to result in prices. So, yeah, that's our thoughts. And those are two big catalysts. I'd say more so the Bitcoin ETF over the halving at this point. Yeah, very well said. And yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, Bitcoin is, it doesn't seem like it now because Bitcoin really has been kind of trading in the range that it's in at the moment, just somewhere between $26 ,000 and $30 ,000, shall we say, for well, for months, really. And so it does feel like, you can call it what you want, the sort of extended bear market, the accumulation zone of the next bull market. But it is very... There's also, there's two known sellers in the market almost at a regular basis. The US government's still selling Bitcoin. And you have FTX that's starting to unload some of their Bitcoin. And so you're getting matched up with, you know, that's why you see this almost sideways slide, you know, and it's disconnect and lack of correlation is because you got these two just unloading and acquiring and just trimming. And then any news could just set this off. But the other thing is that it's possible that our government stops selling at the end of this year and takes a break. They could continue, but if they take a break, well, there's one less seller in the market. And then who knows, maybe what needs to be done in this tranche for FTX also completes as they're projected to. And then now you're relieving sell pressure. You get a Bitcoin approval in Q1 and this thing turns into a vacuum to the upside. Do you, I mean, I wonder what it's like, Brian, to be in your position, like perhaps for, I'm sure you have clients who came in perhaps during the bull market of 2021. And, you know, it's hard for people who experience their first crypto bear market. And, you know, as much as the velocity is intense on the upside, it's also pretty disquieting on the downside. What do you say to people who have sort of started with you in the good times, but now you've got to manage not only their assets through the bear market, but I suppose, you know, their expectations and emotions as well. Yeah, great question, Andy. And it brings me back to the second half of last year and just the many conversations we had with a lot of our clients and, you know, talking about the space and reassuring about our business partners and how well they're here and how good standing they're in and us. And when we onboard clients from the beginning five years ago, even through the bull market in 2021, we go over downside slides with them and we talk about, you know, bad scenarios. You know, hey, you know, how do you feel if this is going to be down 80%, right? And we have those conversations early on when there's no money at play and there's no emotions. And we make that plan and you tend to find that most people can handle it. There could be a few that say, you know, I want to exit and close out. But, you know, now that you have that conversation and it's kind of like out of the way, you can reflect back to, hey, this is the plan we put in place and this is what we're going to do. And for some of those, you know, we can do, if they're a brokerage account, I mentioned earlier, we can do tax loss harvesting. So that's a way to, you know, take these losses and offset it, you know, against future tax payments. And there's an advantage to that. And now when they stay in the game, they allow us to tax loss harvest and prices come back, you get to see some of these get back into the green and they just had a nice, you know, discount to what they're going to be paying in future taxes. And so we try to find things like that. Other things that we do too is, you know, for IRAs, we do stuff unique. We're able to stake in those. In our model portfolios performance, we've actually outperformed Bitcoin by about 30 % by strategically allocating away and pulling back. So that helps as well too, adding units to the account. And we look at this space and can say like, hey, you know, in a year where asset prices came off drastically, we had some cash because we sold earlier. So we're waiting to deploy that. We can tax loss harvest what was down and around. And we're keeping up regular communications with you guys. You know, we're tapping the street to get, you know, insight and affirmation that everybody's in good standing. And that's what really comes to good customer services, just trying to be in front of everybody and open for human communication. Because that's something that most of the businesses in the space really self -directed. I mean, there's no one to talk to in DeFi, right? You can't call any of the businesses. And even in the typical exchanges, it can be hard to have a human to talk to. And that's where we pride ourselves in being available for our clients alongside running the model portfolio. Fantastic. And talk to us, Brian, in terms of I guess the success of DAIM, your business. I'd love to understand any sort of metrics that you watch in terms of the growth in your user base, your clients, your assets under management. I assume things are ticking along and growing over time. Yeah, so when we started the business in 2018, we started off with zero clients. That's the way the regulators wanted to do it. No assets under management. And then a few regulatory audits in 2019, because they liked that we put crypto advisor and manager on there. So that slowed some growth. But then coming into the back half of 2020, we definitely caught a groove. We were able to develop some narrative and marketing in the confines of still Facebook and stuff, not allowing to have crypto advertising, but through our word of mouth and in our network and hand -to -hand discussions. And so we grew the business to over 200 accounts. And really when we look back and we analyze the business today and we look at the AUM and how it fluctuated and the number of clients, I think a lot of companies will see a drastic drawdown in AUM and they will also see a drastic drawdown in number of accounts. Now their accounts might still have a dollar value, but I mean, meaningful accounts, anything over 10 grand. Whereas we'll see that we've trimmed flat through the back half of 2021 and now are slowly increasing. And I think the temperature changed. It felt like right around March that individuals were open to getting back in the space, kind of that really bad hangover from November was behind them. And so I think things are going to get even more favorable for us.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Huobi Changes Name to HTX and Almost Immediately Gets 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 Tuesday, September 22nd, and today we are talking hacks, hacks, hacks. 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. Well, friends, today we start this show talking about Ben Armstrong, better known as BitBoy, who was arrested last night after he won, posted to his YouTube that he was going to confront a former business partner about the Lamborghini that he said was his, two, went to said person's door and rang the doorbell, three, did this with a gun and illegal narcotics in the back of his car, along with another business and affair partner to boot, and then four live streamed himself getting arrested. Just kidding. I'm not going to talk about that ever at all. In fact, I will only say this. The crypto space gets exactly the level of influencers it deserves. So perhaps as we think about where we want to be heading into the next bull market, we might want to choose who we listen to with just a hint more discernment. Now, what we're actually going to be talking about today is the plague of this bear market. Well, outside of Gensler, of course, and that is hacks. A wave of hacks impacted crypto firms starting over the weekend. On Friday, Nansen disclosed a security breach at a third party software vendor. The attacker was able to gain access to admin rights of a Nansen account in charge of facilitating client access to the platform. Nansen claims it, quote, managed to stop the unauthorized access shortly after learning about it and launched an immediate investigation. According to Nansen, wallet funds were unaffected. All affected users had email addresses exposed, while smaller user cohorts had password hashes accessed and wallet addresses revealed. Nansen urged all users to double check emails claiming to be coming from the company and be vigilant for phishing attempts. So that was Friday. Then on Saturday, OpenSea disclosed that one of its third party vendors, quote, experienced a security incident that may have exposed information. They warned that user API keys were compromised. The company noted that the incident was not expected to impact any programs which use an OpenSea API key, but that external parties using exposed keys could experience rate and usage limits. OpenSea plans on shutting down existing keys by next Monday and asked users to rotate their keys. A third exploit was disclosed early on Monday morning. Mixin Network, which is a nominally decentralized wallet service, said it lost $200 million in customer assets during an attack early on Saturday morning. Crypto developer Lawrence Day at Function Zero writes, Also, respectfully, how are you losing $200 million from a cloud breach? So this company Mixin was founded in 2017 and had nearly $400 million in protocol funds across 48 chains. The service allows users to send digital assets assigned to phone numbers and its biggest market appears to be Hong Kong. Now the firm said that it can guarantee the safety of around half of user assets, but that guarantee seems to be in the form of a corporate backstop rather than the product of successful threat mitigation. During a livestream on Monday addressing the attack, Mixin founder Feng Xiaodong said, No matter what your assets are, whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum, we will ensure that half of it is unaffected. We're trying to find a way to recover the compromised money, but that is very difficult. For the other half of the assets, Mixin is considering offering what they are calling bond tokens for users to claim. The firm would later buy back the tokens, making them similar to other token -based recovery schemes seen in the past during events like the Bitfinex hack. A security firm called Slowmist is involved in the investigation and stated that the incident occurred when a cloud service provider database was attacked. Now if this feels like just the latest in a string of big hacks, that's because it is. In 2022, we had the record of $3 .1 billion in funds lost from hacks. And estimates this year include TRMLab saying that $400 million was stolen in Q1, Immunify saying that $700 million was lost in the first half of the year, and then just in Q3 we've had a 126 multi -chain hack in July, a $61 .7 million market -based protocol exploit of Curve Finance in July, $41 .3 million hacked from Stake .com in September, and another July hack of $37 million at CoinsPaid. So from estimates, it looks like this might be the largest hack of the year, roughly the same size as Euler in March. Still, even though it wasn't the biggest, the most high -profile hack of the weekend was disclosed on Monday as well, and that was from HTX. HTX, formerly known as Huobi, suffered the loss of 5 ,000 ETH worth around $8 million on Sunday evening. Justin Sun claimed in a Twitter thread that, quote, HTX has fully covered the losses incurred from the attack and has successfully resolved all related issues. Sun added that, quote, all user assets are SAFU and the platform is operating completely normally. Now, in addition to disclosing the loss, Sun downplayed the impact of the attack, stating that, quote, $8 million represents a relatively small sum in comparison to the $3 billion worth of assets held by our users. It also amounts to just two weeks of revenue for the HTX platform. Sun disclosed the wallet address of the hacker and added, We are willing to offer 5 % of the stolen amount, $400 ,000 USD, as a white hat reward to encourage the hacker to return the stolen funds. If the hacker returns the funds, we will also hire them as a security white hat advisor for HTX. However, they said, if the funds are not returned within seven days, we will transfer the information to law enforcement authorities for further action and to prosecute the hacker. In an on -chain message to the hacker, HTX claimed to have discovered their, quote, true identity. Now, according to Arkham Analytics, the attack affected an HTX hot wallet, which was created in March. Since then, the wallet has received $500 million in deposits from Binance, and on -chain analysts confirmed that funds have now been migrated to a new wallet. Now, there were a lot of comments relating to the name change of this exchange. Crypto Kaleo writes, Huobi changes its name to HTX and gets hacked for $8 million in the first month? Coincidence or tempting fate? Lawrence Day again said, I'm sorry, but renaming Huobi to HTX and then immediately losing millions of dollars is so effing funny that I might have a stroke. Even Binance's CZ said, A week after you rename your exchange after FTX... Jokes aside, our security team will help in tracking hacker funds in all cases where we can. Now, in addition to just the jokes about the HTX name, there are lots of questions floating around about Huobi solvency. To get a sense of some of those theories, go check out Adam Cochran's account. It's a little bit out of the scope of this particular episode, but it's obviously something that we're watching closely. Now it's unclear at this stage whether these attacks had any sort of links, but the small amount of detail available does show some common features. The first three hacks all blamed a third party service provider. While the provider was not named, Nansen did urge them to disclose the security breach. These attacks come just weeks after crypto custody firm Fortress Trust suffered a $15 million attack, which was also related to a security failure at a third party cloud provider called Retool. In that attack, an employee at the software provider was the victim of a phishing attack. The attacker used an AI -synthesized voice clone of an IT support worker to replicate the employee's credentials to access Retool's systems. In their write -up of that attack, Retool said that 27 customer accounts were compromised. All 27 were crypto companies. So the method of attack here, which uses a combination of social engineering and a bypassing of security measures, also bears a striking resemblance to the write -ups of the recent cyber attack on MGM and Caesars casinos. The casino's systems were hacked two weeks ago with customer and corporate data compromised. Postmortems of the attack claimed that hackers used a voice replication of IT workers to gain access. Identity management firm Okta confirmed that the casinos had been using their systems to credential employees. In an August blog post, Okta said that their customers were seeing, quote, consistent pattern of social engineering attacks against their IT service desk personnel, in which the caller's strategy was to convince service desk personnel to reset all multi -factor authentication factors enrolled by highly privileged users. The casino attacks were attributed to a threat actor known as Scattered Spider using malicious software developed by Alfie or Black Cat. Now if these attacks are all part of the same cybercrime spree, it could speak to a group of hackers going after high -value targets like crypto firms. The vulnerability seems hard to address as it involves security training for employees at third -party software providers. And one of the implications is, if these kind of attacks become a systemic threat to the industry, it could mean more crypto firms need to bring sensitive software in -house. That higher barrier to secure operations could make it more difficult for smaller startups to compete in the industry. Now of course for any of you who are listening to the AI breakdown, you'll also recognize that this is not going to be a problem that's unique to the crypto industry. The casino attacks speak to that as well, but the reality is that voice cloning technology is incredibly advanced and just getting more so all the time. Individuals and companies are going to need to develop entirely different modes of operation that recognize the fact that you simply can't trust a voice on the other line of a call anymore. Now when it comes to the impact of these hacks on the industry outside of just the ramifications for the people who lost money themselves, it's hard exactly to know what the real impact is. On the one hand, it certainly lends to a perception of immaturity overall, but at the same time, when it comes to the geopolitics and regulation of crypto, the hacks that are most important to keep an eye on are those that have some sort of geostrategic ramifications, particularly those emanating from the Lazarus Group in North Korea. Still, being this deep into a bear market and trying to match all -time records for hacks is not necessarily the place we want to be overall. The one other story that I wanted to cover on today's show is a bit of a dust -up around the Celsius restructuring. In short, the Celsius bankruptcy could be coming to a close after creditors have voted in favor of the current recovery plan. 98 % of creditors gave the thumbs up to a plan which would see the sale of assets to crypto consortium Fahrenheit Holdings. The acquiring group includes Errington Capital and miner US Bitcoin Corp. Fahrenheit plans to retain and operate mining equipment owned by Celsius under a new corporate structure. The new company also plans to stake Ethereum and monetize other Celsius assets. Some large creditors will receive equity in this new company. And in addition, another $2 billion in liquid crypto will be distributed to creditors. Overall, the plan is projected to provide a 76 -85 % recovery. Now one remaining snag in the plan is an objection from the SEC. The regulator filed its objection last Friday to express concerns with Coinbase's involvement in the process. Celsius receivers plan to use Coinbase as an intermediary to distribute crypto to creditors. The SEC claimed the agreement could require Coinbase to The SEC filing claimed that However, this court should not be asked to approve a deal where their material terms are missing or inconsistent. The regulator also appears concerned about an additional agreement with Coinbase, which Celsius have attempted to file under seal and have not yet disclosed. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal hit back at the SEC's objection in a Twitter post stating, Now, Wayne Vaughn had a very simple explanation, saying, And of course, this isn't the first time we've seen the SEC stand in the way of a bankruptcy distribution agreed to by creditors. In March, the SEC objected to Voyager using Binance US to distribute crypto to its creditors, which was of course months before the regulator had filed its lawsuit against Binance but still based their objections on claims that the exchange was an unregistered securities brokerage. A very unimpressed judge in the Voyager case called it This time around, of course, the SEC at least does have an ongoing lawsuit that they can point to regarding Coinbase's brokerage services, but the objection does still seem odd given that the regulator didn't seek an injunction to prevent Coinbase from operating as normal in the interim. The Celsius case will return to court next Thursday to hear the SEC's argument and see if the judge is inclined to allow the plan to go ahead. Now one interesting line of discussion are the implications for the spot ETF applications that are outstanding. Adam Cochrane writes, Now, speaking of ETFs, Bitwise filed an amendment to its spot Bitcoin ETF application on Monday, adding 40 pages of research on Bitcoin market structure. The research aimed to preempt arguments from the SEC, which could be used to reject the current batch of ETF applications. Bitwise claimed to show that Bitcoin futures are the primary market for price discovery with spot prices following futures. According to Bitwise, this would mean that the well -regulated CME futures market should be the primary consideration when looking for evidence of market manipulation. They argued that this trading venue should count as a regulated market of significant size for market surveillance purposes. As part of their argument, Bitwise also cited a previous study from 2019, which suggested that Bitcoin's spot market mainly consisted of fake volume, making the relative size of the regulated futures market much larger in comparison. Regarding the price impact of futures, Bitwise found in 2021 that futures markets accounted for between 52 .97 % and 68 .03 % of Bitcoin's price discovery. Now this isn't the first time Bitwise have dropped large amounts of Bitcoin research on the SEC to dispute their claims. They have produced at least two 100 -page -plus reports in support of previous Bitcoin ETF applications. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hogan explained his firm's strategy in a Twitter thread stating, That's the happy case. The question is, what happens if the SEC appeals the court decision? In short, we return to the status quo. We're back to needing to prove that the CME Bitcoin futures market leads price discovery over the spot market such that it can serve as a regulated market of significant size for the purpose of surveillance. Unfortunately, existing filings do not include substantively new arguments or research addressing this question head on. Until now, today's amendment aims to address point by point each of the major objections the SEC has raised in prior disapprovals for spot Bitcoin ETFs. In particular, we try to clear up the significant confusion around the growing body of academic literature on price discovery in the Bitcoin market and demonstrate that every well -designed academic study supports the finding that the CME is significant. So friends, there you have it, a little bit of hacks, a little bit of the SEC objecting to something that seems reasonable from the outside. In other words, a quintessential 2023 crypto day. Appreciate you guys listening, as always. And until next time. Peace.
Woz Happening!!!!
A highlight from Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (French) (2019) Movie Review
"What's happening everyone here and Ben back again this week we are covering a film that is very near and dear to my heart a film that I love it is Celine Sakama's Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In the previous weeks we have covered Petit Maman which is also done by her so I was really excited to talk more about her filmography because I think she's an incredible director. Ben tell me about your history with the film. So we had been suggested for Petit Maman by one of our listeners and then you got excited about the fact that there was the Portrait of a Lady on Fire and so I said well let's cover that because well you were very excited about it. Oh my god and I'm so excited about it and I can't wait to talk about this movie. This movie came out I think in 2019 and it obviously is about a painter and her subject that she's painted but more so than that to me it is a movie about what it is like to be a woman especially in a historical time and I think it one thing that this movie does so well is it really talks and really celebrates the female gaze and we're gonna talk a lot today about the female gaze versus the male gaze as well as talk about the film because it covers a lot of things that is not covered in historical times. I think nowadays we are getting more of women's stories but this this is a woman's story that I think is very important. I think it talks about how art and beauty and things like this can transcend and celebrate life and how meaningful they can be and what kind of impact they have on us. So our main protagonist is Mary Ann. She is a painter and to to Heloise who is our other protagonist they live very different lives. Mary Ann this story is told in flashback so we see Mary Ann teaching a group of young girls painting and she is talking about and she's telling a story about this one painting that she has done which is a memory of her and Heloise one of the first times that she actually saw her and I am gonna get really excited so if I feel a little disjumbled I will come back around. So it follows the story of Mary Ann who is a painter who gets commissioned by Heloise's mother to come in and paint a portrait of her to send to this man that has decided he wants to marry her because back in the day women could only do one thing which was get married off and we see the struggle that Heloise has with this because she talks about how her sister had the same fate as her but ended up killing herself. Yes she took her life and she is still in mourning over this.
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep382: Don't Be Afraid Of Giving Value
"Don't be afraid of giving value. Don't be afraid of giving actual tangible value that somebody can grab hold of and do something about because that's how people are going to share things. 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. What's up, podcaster? It's your host, Adam Adams. And we are going to be talking about not being afraid of giving value. Here's the thing. I had a conversation recently with somebody who's starting a podcast and it's for their business. And he and I were talking about what he could talk about. And we're outlining a bunch of ideas. He's a coaching client. We're outlining a whole bunch of ideas that he could do episodes on. I started by asking him, what does your perfect listener need to know? What is that perfect, perfect listener? The same person that you would actually do business with. They would hire you and you would be able to support them. They would be able to go further and faster. The investment with you would be nothing to them compared to how much they would make because they did that. I asked him, who do you serve? How do you serve them? And what do they need right now? And he starts giving me some options, some ideas. And one of the ideas, he was like, oh, well this. And I was like, that's great. And he goes, yeah, but I mean, I can't give him all of the details of that. And I'm like, okay, I knew where this is going, but I go, why not? What do you think is going to happen? And he goes, well, if they know all of the things and they don't need to hire me. And so I got to hold some things close to my chest. You don't freaking need to keep anything close to your chest. I wanted to say, I didn't say it like that. I should have slapped him up the side of the head, but he was virtual and I couldn't. So he goes, yeah, I've got to keep some stuff close to my chest. That's private stuff for my coaching clients only. I thought about it for a second and I go, what's the worst that could happen? A couple of them use it and they get successful. Why not share it on your podcast? And I mentioned, I've had other coaching clients in the past few years. I've been helping people with podcasting since even before my company launched in 2019. And I let them know that, hey, when I was doing my real estate podcast that I sold, I sold it back in 2020. When I was doing my real estate podcast, I gave all the goods and people came to me in droves. They flocked to me and I made a lot of money. I was able to raise a lot of equity for my real estate deals and find great deals and be awarded or win deals that I wouldn't have because I gave the good stuff. And I'm talking to this guy and just letting him know that don't be afraid of doing that. That is just some fear that's inside of you. And I thought to myself, because this wasn't the only time I ever had this conversation, I've had this conversation many times, especially when I'm being interviewed on other people's podcasts. When I'm being interviewed on a podcast about podcasting and people are asking me like, you know, what should I do? I'm constantly saying, don't be afraid of giving value. Don't be afraid of giving actual tangible value that somebody can grab hold of and do something about because that's how people are going to share things. I'm thinking right now in my head of this guy named Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, he's kind of famous for teaching people that debt is bad. All debt is bad. I don't agree with it and that's okay. But he tries to share like the paid off mortgage is the new status symbol of wealth replacing the BMW. So he basically says and I hear the wisdom in it. He's basically saying like, instead of having a house that's not paid for and a BMW that's not paid for and now you're shit out of luck if the economy goes bad, pay off the house and maybe just have a Toyota for a while, have a Honda for a while and then graduate to a BMW when you can pay it all in cash. So you don't need that status symbol. Well, Dave Ramsey gives all of the goods. He gives all the goods on every freaking time. He basically only has four things to talk about, but he talks about them in full depth each and every time. And what that means to you is if he's making millions and millions of dollars, if Adam's able to do just fine and work only a few hours a week and have good revenue coming into the business, if other people are able to do this and give away the goods so that you have to keep things like my coaching client said close to the chest, nothing, give out the goods. It will come back to you probably tenfold. So today, this episode is about not being afraid of giving value to anywhere, anyone in anywhere, give the value, even if you're not getting paid for it. And it's going to come back to you. By the way, this was a pretty short episode. I have a lot of these podcast episodes that are solos that might only be three, four, five, ten, fifteen minutes. And that means what I'm asking you to do is rather than turn us off, check out the episode that I've got queued up for you. I'll see you there. You're not alone if you're ready to either get your very first affordable microphone or if you're ready to upgrade your equipment to some legit podcasting studio equipment. Because on all of the forums over the last few months, I'm seeing this all the time. Even my own personal clients that work with my team, they're ready to get that next microphone. They're asking us for it. Additionally, when I'm on discovery calls with potential clients, they're always asking for this stuff. Hey, what mic do you recommend? Hey, what lighting do you recommend? What webcam should I be using? So many questions. And so what we did, my whole team has put together a PDF so that if you're one of those people who is looking to either get your very first affordable microphone or if you're ready to upgrade your equipment to more professional podcast studio equipment, whether it's soundproofing or whatever, we've got you covered by going to growyourshow .com forward slash PDF, and you can download the PDF for free or right there on the webpage is everything that you would have and you don't need to download the PDF either way. Just go to growyourshow .com forward slash PDF, which will put you to the podcasting that me and my team have personally vetted. I'll see you on the next episode.
Cinemavino
"2019" Discussed on Cinemavino
"I don't think so. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if they still make that clothing line. Do they? We are the wrong demo. Yeah, I have to look into that. Or is it fobo TV? Fobo? Who fubo? I have fun more about Phoebe. Yeah, the wrong demo here. Yeah. Let's stick to Netflix and chill. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, we enjoyed this movie all very much. Yeah. Nicholas foulee at the Burt rose. Drink it up. Yeah, if you're looking for a good splurge. Very good high priced date night champagne. Yeah. You know, because it's like your partner is worth it. He has them, whoever they're worth it. It's been that money. Yeah. And so next we're going to take a look at I believe city of angels. City of angels is a super bad. Our next two years we're going to look at, we'll keep our looks at boba Fett and vox Machina almost at vox populi. Whatever it is that's Travis's cartoon, we're going to take a look at that and talk a little bit more about Travis's cartoon. Travis's nerd AMA. Is that part of that? Is that mouse Rhett? I can't remember. The legend of mouse right now. That I would watch. Andy dwyer. I see a range of I think that songs about California and drugs. Yeah. I think so too. I think that's every so many. And I was like, yeah. Every it's about Los Angeles and heroin. Yeah, just a guess. So I was in Red Hot Chili Peppers, covered bin in high school. I'll just let that be known. What was the name of it? Rappers? Nice. What did you play? Who were you in the band? I was lead singer? Oh, you're Anthony kitas. I was Anthony Keith. Nice. Yeah. We did. We did city angels. God, what else we do? I definitely on the spot. I don't remember. I like that. I hope you had a sock on your whatnot. I certainly did. Yeah. I think I would be flee. I think I would be on the bed. Yeah. Maybe a good Chad. The drummer. Yeah. I can see it. See, I was a drummer and a singer, but the guy who got drama was a lot better than me, so. I didn't have much of a choice. You know, you can let it fly. So yeah, we're going to start chili peppers cover band. I think we should have a side. Yeah, we should. I'll play drums. Yeah, that'll be our other podcast is our gigs doing stadium Arcadia songs. And blood sugar sex magic. Yeah. Yeah. So this has been another episode. Yeah. Music vino. Yeah, not with a bang but a whimper probably both. But bang and a Weber. You can have both. And we will see you guys next time. We got Taylor Sean. Thank you guys very much. Yeah. Thanks for having us. And we will see you guys next time later. Keep it in keep it out. Be sure to listen, rate and subscribe at Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is that cinema vino dot net and reviews of these movies can be found at Todd wafford movies.
Cinemavino
"2019" Discussed on Cinemavino
"She watched it love the franchise. So it's a lot of fun when she really liked truly gets into it. And she loved dirty dancing. Not knowing anything about it. And so it was a lot of fun for me to watch that with her because it's like watching it for the first time. It's like watching your kid open Christmas presents. It's like, you know, it's something you get to experience Christmas again. Watching a movie with someone who's never seen it and they really love it, it's like watching it for the first time. And so dirty dancing, I think was our best date movie that we ever did, because yeah, she really got involved in it. I think Romeo and Juliet, the Leo. Yes. The way your vehicle. I think that would be perfect. Just because it captures your attention, it's fun. Well acted. Well acted. Paul Rudd's in there too. Yeah? No. That's sexiest man. Yeah. Johnny mission west. No. My mom's high school home monitor. She's very proud of her high school having both Ted Lasso and the sexy panel off. The royals. Yeah. I don't think this this might not be the best movie..
Cinemavino
"2019" Discussed on Cinemavino
"Come on over. Listen, I would beat up our heartbeat. Yeah. It's like, okay, yeah, Nev Campbell. Yeah, y'all come over here. Let's go ahead and jump on. Yeah, that's gonna work on this. David Arquette, everybody just grab a shovel. But I think also too like this with this film, it's like we were saying, is these simplistic kind of movie it is? Where it's just like, I mean, I wish I would wash it in theaters. Yeah. And so did you watch it with Bailey? No, I did not. Okay. I see if he watches a couple. She was not in the mood for the movie. Did you think she would have enjoyed it? I think she would have. I told her. And we got this whole conversation about how we should watch more movies, pre podcasts, we were talking about how tired of watching hour long episodes of TV. And I said, you know, you would have liked this. Yeah. I was shocked, but was it? It was over two hours, wasn't it? It was two hours, 14 minutes. And it throws me off and it was just like because I was thinking like, oh, I was like, oh, an hour and a half film, no big deal, and a 124 minutes. Okay, I was like, oh, I want to have film, no big deal. I'll knock this out. And I was like, oh, I was like, man, I know credits are kind of part of this, but me and my, I was like two hours just like sweet baby Moses. That's like lengthy. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. How did you watch this with Jonah? I did not. Now, do you think she would enjoy it? No. I mean, yes, but no, I don't think it would have captured her attention. You know, when you think about what would be a great date night movie, you know, it's one that kind of keeps you magnetized to the screen where you're not really going to break your attention..
Cinemavino
"2019" Discussed on Cinemavino
"Think the best way to say this. I like the film. I do think the only thing I get kind of like, it's Seth Rogen. And so you know what you're getting into. You know, and I've made a joke before the podcast is like, you know, people gave you, oh, it's Michael Cera playing Michael Cera. And I was like, man, this is just Joe Rogan playing Joe Rogan. This is the same film 10,000 times. I Seth Rogen playing Seth Rogen. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. But it was like the same. I've been there, done that. But ultimately, I like the film. It's just going to sound kind of weird, but it was like, we call this a RomCom, but was it more of a comedy that just had to involve a little bit of roaming? It had like a romantic. And that's how I felt about it. It was like, I thought it was hilarious. I really did. And I was just like, man, but is it a RomCom? It was just like, I don't know how to define a RomCom, but I was like, man, this is more just a comedy, just happens to have two people that kind of slowly kind of get it on. You feel it out. Yeah. But I had not seen it before and I can see though this I would definitely watch it again though. Yeah. And it was like, and I can see this being, you know, it's any generation moves on but like, hey, you know, I kind of used elf as an example. It's like certain generation has a Christmas story as a Christmas movie or elf is now the new Christmas movie or Christmas vacation is a Christmas movie. It's like, I could kind of see this moving on. It's like, oh, this was like, this was like my RomCom. You know, this movie could, I could see younger generation being like, yeah. Yeah, long shot. It's like, it's relatable. It's a long shot. Yeah. All right. I think I like to think about romantic comedies, kind of in the way of like bisexuality is like, you don't have to be 50% romantic 50% comedy. It's like you can be anywhere on the spectrum you can be 10% romantic 90% comedy. 90% romance, 10% comedy. I think for a large part of the 90s rom coms were 90% romance in person. It weren't funny movies. They were just romantic movies. Yeah, they had like a comedic plot..
Cinemavino
"2019" Discussed on Cinemavino
"And welcome back to saint vino. This is going to be a meteor Sean for this one. There's going to be a fog Travis. Exactly. Fuck. Is it home washing his tights? And his nerdy bull crap. He had to go shine his codpiece. That was actually very true. Yeah. So we are going to talk about our second movie in our Valentine's Day. Date move series. Long shot. Long shot. Which I saw with my wife as a date movie. So I can evaluate it on those terms. Theaters? Yeah, so 2019 2019. Yeah. And there is a review at Todd movies dot com. You can check out for it. So it's in the can. Yeah, so without a review, right after the film, you did assume that it came out and you just nice. Yeah. Nice. We're catching up to our old selves. Yeah, exactly. It's like the man alone were catching up to the present. For this one of the entire month we're doing bubbly. So this is an actual champagne we're doing for this one. Nicholas, a fully epe. From the champagne region of France. Yes, it is. Wow. It is a brute rose. So this I believe will be a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the champagne region of France. This is a splurge wine. Last week we did a Cromwell. It was about 20 bucks. It would be a good drinking. Well, I don't want to say a pounding wine. But you could drink it in mass quantities. It's 20 bucks. Yeah, we pounded it, but we have to. Yeah. We took it down like a Dyson vacuum. Yes. This one is going to be a little more restorative. It's going to be about 60 bucks. This is the one you want on the Valentine's Day. It's a respectable. You're sipping on it, pouring down the crack of whoever's asked. You're just kind of just going from there. Doing what you do. Yeah. I do that with every shampoo. Should I not? I haven't even done that with like Shasta. It's the bubbles. Yeah. Yeah, so you can do anything. It's the experience. If you want to add more bubbles, that's how you do it. So yeah, this one is going to be, you can even tell by looking at it versus the previous the cremon. It's much deeper, dark. It has a richer paint color to it. It's almost orange. Like an orangey, like there's so much more body to it. Yeah. And it's vibrant. It's rich in flavor. I mean, it's fruity, but not sweet, as one can be sometimes..
Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"2019" Discussed on Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"Like what the hawks have done where they have so many capable wings that they can throw at you and I think that's when it was a big key to their success last year. Obviously everyone's gonna struggle with this year, but yeah, I'm gonna go cam reddish here. I like it a lot. Yeah, he's shooting under 30% on mid range jumpers and nearly 40% on threes. So I think the thing for him is and this is a lot to say about the system and the situation that he's in and it's like, it's not the easiest thing in the world to get a rhythm as an offensive player and particularly as someone who's asked to score on that team right now. There's so many mouths to feed and the guy who sets the table is their leading score and one of the highest scorers in the entire league. So it's just a difficult situation he's making the most of it. The athleticism and the upside and I would not, man, it's tough 'cause everyone talks about how they need to trade one of these guys, cam, hunter, they already signed her, and I wouldn't want to trade any of them. I'm just like, I don't want to take that chance either. I don't want to take that chance either. I'm with you. I'm riding it out with those guys for as long as I can. So that's just going to be really interesting. I do want to tell a quick camera story. I don't think I have on the pod. But an extremely quiet him and Deandre hunter, both from Philly, best friends on the team, super quiet, except when they talk to each other is what I was told by everybody. And when I spoke to cam, he was very quiet. I asked him a certain question that I don't believe I can share on the pod unfortunately, but their PR guy told me that he had never heard cam as loud responding to my question in all of his time around him. So that was fun. I got a rise out of him. All good natured, but he got very excited when I asked him a certain question about the great story to hear with absolutely zero context or details. I know. I'm sorry. Thank you for that. I try to give what I can, you know? That's what I try to do. Okay, so I'm up with sometimes it's sometimes it's better not to give it all, you know? It's all just exactly. You understand. Yeah. Okay. This is, okay, I'm looking at the pool here. I'm really nervous that we're just gonna totally whip on somebody. Looking at the pool or looking at pool. Oh, touche. I mean, both to be honest with you. I'm considering that. I also, like, I would have maybe I have Kelvin Johnson, but he's kind of down on my board, not because I don't like him, but yeah, we're definitely gonna miss someone and some fan base is gonna hate us forever. So that'll be fun. Man, I know who you wanna take at number 11. You do. Yeah. There's someone I wanna take, but I'm not taking them yet. I'll tell you that right now..
Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"2019" Discussed on Open Floor: SI's NBA Show
"I think he can survive on that out of the floor. He shoots the hell out of the ball, he dunks the help, all he's fun to watch. You can play a multiple positions. And so yeah, I'm going with cam Johnson. I love it. I would not have gotten that direction yet, but just because I kind of feel like there's more upside available and yeah, maybe he'll develop and progress and he's such a Phoenix, but that's such a good part that you know about the draft because it's always right, it's upside, and I think what I value more is a known quantity. And that's something that I think a little bit where whether it's a guy like cam Thomas is here dropping into the 20s or and it's just sometimes it's surprising that players, it's like you saw this guy shoot well, you see that he has kind of an NBA ready body. But you think that, oh, he's not gonna improve a ton, so I'm not gonna pick him, but just give me somebody that I can slot into my playoff rotation, you know? So I just really like Kim Johnson and I'm glad that he's succeeding. And I was like, yeah, screw it. I'm going to them. Okay, so man. I know you said at the top that you sent out a tweet on Christmas morning and Knicks fans were getting super upset. And I think we're already. After the cam Johnson pick, I gotta say. Yeah. You're gonna get you're gonna get some hate mail. I'm sorry too. Sure, I'm sure. Yeah. But you know what, Rohan? I'm gonna get that hate mail too. 'cause I'm not sure. Let's go. Let's go. I'm going with kelden Johnson. Wow. My boy. My boy, big buddy. Mariah Carey's number one fan. I mean, he's just like, he's one of my favorite players to watch. I love him. Fun fact about him, he leads the NBA in three point shooting right now. Did you know that? I mean like can we talk about three point shooting? I know it was like weirdly down, but when you look at three point shooting stats now, are there like just a ton of guys shooting 40% or something ridiculous? I actually have not looked at this in a minute. But maybe if you look at the three point percentage leaders as kind of crazy, that's all I'm going to say. Interesting. Well, he is taking over three a game and making 47.2%. I don't know how sustainable all that is. He shot 33% last year on two per game. But I mean, he's averaging 15 and 6. Rugged defender, super high energy, freight train and transition. And I don't know like everyone who plays with him loves him, and he's just like, I mean, he was on Team USA. I know Greg Popovich was the coach, but..
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"Son la forum of welker ullivan's arco gonna dance. My mocha begs the stove. Listen to me. Hiss and burn. Watch me stove response. moka pot. The mocha dances with the rhythm. Black balloons like suffocated yells. Returning force. Its head to shake and sing like the clubbing. The water boils shaking the maracas. The legs move with speed atop the stage. The hips twist the form tips and the dance has ended until tomorrow. Thank you thank you. H peter fink judges. We're kind of three one. Two three point to a seven point. Four seven point nine another seven point nine and seven point seven now audience. You may here scores that you liked. You may hear scores. You don't like now judges. Whatever you don't be swayed by what the audience says to you. Ok audience sway the crap out of these judges all right. Just do it. Just go for it right. Please welcome to the microphone jordan. Walnut the rose. That told me so. I picked the rose today. The biggest one of the mall. It was bright red and it smelled amazing. As i picked each pedal. I asked myself. If you love me are not. The last pedal always landed on. No but i told myself arosa just arose. And what do they know and for almost two years. I did that. I let my emotions and feelings. Which i thought was love blind me from reality but i can see now. I can see how dumb i was. I could see the dirt. That's on me because you. But i'm clean now. I tell myself everything will be okay. We will figure it out but who knew the best for us was going our separate ways. You always said you wanted a break but maybe i misunderstood or made a mistake because you let another. Take my place. Not even a week after you see in a move to the next chapter. You went to a new book. But that's my fault. I know books..
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"And enjoy these incredible poems and the roar of a live audience in addition to hearing some of these stunning performances. We will also hear from the emcee of the evening. Mighty mike mcgee and also from a few students talk about their work just a quick reminder that all the poems you'll hear this episode are written by high school youth and some contain explicit language and mature content which may not be suitable for all audiences. Here's our host mighty might be. I had started slamming in the fall of nineteen ninety eight so The twenty year. Mark last fall i start writing stories like short stories when i was about five and so i'd always sort of set out to be a writer Then i started writing screenplays in high school. I wrote one act place. I kinda wrote a little bit of everything Hip hop lyrics was going to be a rapper. You know. I can't really give us very many of the beginnings endings of any of those those things. They all seemed to sort of blend together but poetry One out poaching comedy sort one out Two thousand and three. I won the national coach slam. When i first started. You said poetry slam or spoken word. performance poetry. You had to explain what those were almost always if someone's sale. What do you do do this in a like. Yeah what do you do for actually up. That's what i'm trying to do for work and so you'd have to explain it. I always had to explain it to people and slowly. But surely i haven't had to explain it over the years you know less and less and less to the point where i never have to explain it. Everybody's heard of a poetry slam. I can go in some random barbershop. I did today. Went into a barbershop was chatting with the barber and he asked. What are you doing today. I said i going to be hosting a youth coach son. Oh cool yeah. And then he kind of went on about poetry's labs and i'm like this is cool. All right.
Bald Movies
"2019" Discussed on Bald Movies
"A lot of people think about things like depression alcoholism and anxiety. When you think about therapy therapists can help you with so much. More like to be more assertive set healthy boundaries with your work friends and family have more self-confidence if you think you could benefit from help with issues like these better help is here for you better help. Assess your needs a match you with your own. Licensed professional therapist. You can start communicating and under forty eight hours better helps not a crisis line. It's self help. It's professional counseling done. Securely online better help is open for clients worldwide. being online doesn't mean a better help is impersonal. You can log into your account and send a message to your counselor anytime. You'll get timely responses. Plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so that you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room as with traditional therapy. Better help wants you to start living happier life today. So visit their website and read testimonials from people they've already helped which is updated daily their testimonials page. And here's what one better help client had to say about their counselor. Joyce has been incredibly helpful in just a few short sessions. She's so thoughtful engaged and was really able to.
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"Our math experts. Convene and decide. Who is winning. What this evening. I would like to poem for you. Is that right. Spent a lot of time. I think because my mom works the graveyard shift. I spent a lot of time being awake being twelve and having four younger sisters and younger brothers and watching them overnight and being worried about her being gone in us being alone and this and that and i sort of fell in love with the night. I really really fell in love with the night so it made sense that when i started working and i had to get a job i started working the graveyard shift so this is anyone who's ever worked overnight for anyone who's ever worked overnight or has felt lonely now. I've been told that it can be dangerous can be so dangerous. I've been told that in fifteen hundred england they buried people prematurely due to a comatose state by drinking alcohol from lead pewter cups to radically these awful mistakes and to prevent many wrongful deaths. They hired men to sit in the cemeteries with lanterns and shovels to listen for ringing bells these bells were tied to twine in the twin was run underground or the risks of the deceased person awoke inside their coughing and scrambled for escape. Their bellwood sound six feet above the diggers would start digging hence those buried alive. We're saved by the bell and the diggers worked became known as the first graveyard. Shift the only people at that time willing to work in the dark and sleep during the day. So i'm at my new graveyard job at the mall. I stopped toys for the kids at christmas time. I work in the dark like quasimodo because they were never hire me for a daylight position. I guess i just don't appeal to their regular shoppers. And i definitely don't appeal to the kind of people that stopped by are stored for spending thousands at nordstrom. Come see the big guy. Come one come all come down to the mall. See for yourself this big giant health. I cannot dance for a dollar. And i will not give up my dreams for a job. I work in the dark to enjoy the sun. I planned my life during my ten minute breaks. While the nocturnal animals play in the parking garage amongst littered shopping bags receipts in price tags as world sleeps dreaming of designer clothes bottled water and a beverly hills lifestyle. I debate with myself whether or not even have time to suck down one more cigarette and if you can see the blue in this caller the new know that i have learned quite well. Just had to differentiate between the day walkers and those that roam the night. I prefer the light of the moon over your basic fluorescent office. Fixture the kind of like assumes the distrust between you and your boss the kind of like the picks into an around every corner those are the lights are stores use it malls to scare where the shoplifters and those lights they shut off when the graveyard shift punches in. They know that something's going to be missing mornings. What's the point. The graveyard shift is creative taking what is never rightfully theirs. But obviously no one else is. Either there's something missing in the morning. When the crew takes over that the customers can smell it under the hot lights of admissions. It is creativity born with night. Walkers is how much the day hates the night. You'll never see a pigeon hanging out with an owl and you'll never see beverly hills hand her phone number as she leaves them all with her bags of. Hey look at me while enter them all in an era of hey look at me. I mean we're all the same. Beverly only look pretty hard and your outfit the way. Expose your midriff your flat flat stomach. Wish you could say to me. Hey mcgee you look good in that dictionary. The way it exposes your ideals manipulations your faults in your ambitions but we seem to take two different escalators ticket to the same place in life. I'm kind of like banish royalty and your upper class white trash day and night day and night can never make love. They can only tease each other. And a four play called twilight and the only things. I regret at three in the morning as i solve the world's problems and chain smoke outside the mall that i have no bell to ring and rainbows. Never ever come out at night. Thank you that was an episode featuring verse at twenty nineteen the citywide youth poetry slam the 2021 slam coming up on thursday april twenty ninth at five thirty online to learn more about the event including how to attend visit literary dash arts dot org. This has been literary arts the archive project. It's a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world's best writers from more than thirty five years of literary arts in portland. Join us next time for the archive project a literary arts production in collaboration with oregon public broadcasting to hear more from the archive project. Subscribe wherever you get. Your podcasts support for the archive project is provided by cole. Haan on a mission to fuel. Your big ideas more at cole. Haan dot com. Our show is produced by crystal gory for radio. And podcast with production oversight by amanda bullock and support from liz olafsson special. Thanks to joe. T roy and the entire literary arts staff board and community. The show would not be possible without them. Thanks also to the band emancipator for our theme music and thanks to all of you for listening. I'm andrew procter and this has been another episode of the archive project from literary arts. Join us next time and find your story here.
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"Right because a pin a page a mike a stage hoped in my rage and my days and right because i shy from interaction. Rather create the action. it's easier to skip. Emotions linked the ink into a cool cup of compassion. Right because for a while in ignorance to your call obliterated my blissful oblivion i right because honestly my own. Honesty was beginning to bother me. I right because you were caller number two or three in the demons you'll have bestowed upon me starting to get to me right because i had to face facts negligent of the fact that it hurt me. I wrote because every time i spoke it seemed as if my voice was ignored as if my mouth was taped. Shit of my voice was mute as down the pencil and paper. I no longer saw the need to speak as i wrote my tongue in almost swallowed i found poetry. I had to learn to write because at three am. I could never sleep in physically. My eyes were beginning to tokyo designer bags and my head was temporarily taken over. The weight of the world wants on my shoulders and mentally well. It's a mental game so not if tonight. Allied awake with dreams of monetary gain. In no pain. I had to learn to write because when no one was there painting pictures by poor. My passed on paper provided assistance. I had to learn to write. Because i had to save me from me because me i'm my worst enemy at subconsciously. Chosen to ignore my divine energy non struggling to make ends meet my friends. Peop- the change in the rift in my usual character. And i'm not boogie but i guess my reflection we just lost nipsy. So i'm lacking a little direction in mahad is heavy. I'm thinking when i'm picking. What if the cops come. Give me a. hey yuki. Didn't people hate us. 'cause they amos so they rather degrade us decapitate abilities limit. The opportunities pederson each other tension between you and me. And what do what do we gain from being distant beef on the net new matt over a mentioned nigga. They're killing us really killing us and laughing up fish the show us that they don't give if we're gonna preach our lives matter. They've got to matter to us. I origin- on black boys don't hidden hurts and that's at three. Am that's how. I'm thinking saw start putting this paper. Like his katelyn mustard was like a baby started. Peaking 'cause i never heal from that pain just pushed it deep in. I had no idea that if i ignore my demons that come back over time. I had no idea they set up shop within my mind. I've been kind man just to hear something other than thinking tired of staring at this walk. If i ain't even blinking. They only hear me. They don't feel me to see the scars. But wasn't there. When i felt the blow. When i was down i had to learn to fight. I guess you could say. I saved my life when i learned how to write davis one two three nine point eight nine point. Six ted nine point nine nine other ted. I love a crowd that wants to talk and that is probably the most important thing tonight is tonight is a conversation. It just doesn't. It's not gonna look like it's not gonna look like a two way conversation Actually going to be eight thousand way conversation And we don't realize applause clapping cheering screaming whistling Humming doing on. Those are all words in some language. You know that all do understand we we take it in we receive it and it makes us feel something so When a poet goes up there no matter how old they are from four years old to one hundred and four years old. You know the moment but it goes up there to to speak as long as it's from their truth and it seems feels genuine looks genuine than the audience is going to respond and that will be a conversation And so tonight is all about conversation so by generating conversation And somebody's gonna go home tonight. And they're going to be just dazzled And wowed by the idea that somebody a third age a quarter of their age made them think about something they'd had never considered before. Please welcome up to the microphone. Arianna peters this is called. Six is not something i seem to want. What are you are you the sweet fleeting feeding of a job. Well done are you the shimmering object. I received when i caught the ball. The teacher kicked in fifth grade. A ward you've blessed me with my fifteen minutes of fame. The success that only found in my report cards that consecutive as in your mind ritz smart able but most importantly healthy. Do i look healthy to you. Because my voice sounds youthful and resilience. Now listen to me as i stumble over my words to convey to you got surprisingly. I'm not mentally stable teenager. I'm going to be honest. I've asked myself the question of do i. Matter what value does my life have good. Oh no one had a clue because the as of my report card and my name on the honor roll. Don't only communicate my competence but are also a public documentation of my mental state and what was the doctor's verdict. Oh would you look at that. A lifetime supply of happiness and satisfaction. But if you'd only take the time to read the fine print you can find. This doctor isn't a reliable source. I think we should find a second opinion. I said i think we should find a second opinion. Anyone tears how we choose me. The woman behind the mystery mass reliable. Dr note that we've all been waiting for now. You ask me for my verdict. And i shall bestow still upon you just that now i say that yes this girl. Competition able but healthy. She is not eating excessively sleeping constantly. Her phrases read. They'll ask me how i am. I don't need or want your attention. They're giving you attention because you're exterior expression screams severe depression. I don't need your emotional support. I'm fine leave me alone sweetie. No you're not you fooled yourself into thinking you'd be called in the arms of this of the first doctor that has lied to everyone forever always knowing their expectations and everyone's voice the sound goose stronger. I grew weaker. You can tell you what they said. You'll do great. They said you can't do this really compared to how you did last year. The questions can pouring out of their mouths oozing tar so much at the second doctor hides their verdict away along with many others. Keep asking. The sound gets louder. The questions make this room. That is in bigger only creating more space to get lost in italy traps. Expectations have adopted from everyone else. Swirl around in my head. It's hard to get them to understand when i don't even know what i'm capable of when keep setting bars for myself that i can't reach the next day. They jump higher but my legs are buckling. I don't know what to do the smart person you know. Does she ask. Questions raised her hand or demand. Answers does you stand tall above the crowd that peacock in the land of pigeons. I so looking for myself in your is the site is foggy but i spent five years trying to find out what you want me to be. My brain is giving up on me. I can't remember what i had for breakfast this morning or show was watching when the commercials come on. I want to be able to do something so badly that it seems like. I can't do anything. Because if i can do. Something my legs will stop. Buckling the barra. Stop moving people to.
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"Put your hands together for daschle. Russia in nineteen seventeen the watchmaking factories employed predominantly women. They used self luminous paint. It glowed and the women were tap. Alie it was the beginning of feminism. They made their own money. They were instructed to lick their brushes to get a thinner point to better their work. Their bosses said it's fine. Their bosses said trust us. They always say that in nineteen seventeen the united states radium corporation employed approximately four thousand. Three hundred sixty eight women. They worked with the powdered. Substance whispered into their work. Time will tell and. I walked into that factory. There were warning signs black and yellow marked toxic glowing with the radiation. I saw tables where women worked saw them bre leading to the bone. I saw him and i saw your face smiling. You made me factory worker craftsmen radium girl. Happy to see me paint. The girls were told it was fine even when their lips turned black even when their jaws started crumbling even win their lungs ache to even when they started coughing up. Blood time will tell time will tell time will tell in nineteen twenty eight and the radium girls decided to sue the united states radium corporation. Sick in bed couldn't lift their arms to take the oath. They kept winning their cases and yet they never admit to the harm. They cause us. It wasn't until one of the men testified that they finally paid some of the radium god on his hand. His bones were crumbling. Of course none of the women were alive for it. But they say that where they're buried their bones still glow daschle. One two three. We have a nine point to a nine point. Five point seven nine point. Four point one. Liz applaud the poet. Please welcome to the microphone. Aaron challinor feminism contrary to popular belief is not a category primarily compromised by men hating bossy resemble pissy feminine single stuck up vengeful ugly crazy psycho enraged annoyed women. But don't worry we do have our fair share of scathing. She b.'s at men's entire existence. And can you blame them. I mean it is just men just chilling congress listlessly dismissing rape cases and ignoring the basic human. Right of getting to decide what happens to your own body. Pepper spray is just part of life for some women for some women. It's like pressing next episode. You go out with your friends. You will be approached by creeper some women. They're brought size as part of the investigation. The length of their skirt determines whether some women keep their jobs. Women keep their mouth shut because if they speak up. They'll be demoralized monetize and degraded. Some women don't identify as feminist because they want mental like them. Some women do identify as feminists because bossy can be kinky. Some women just want equal pay but no. Let's make fun of the girl speaking their minds in class. Let's call the male feminists gay because society is so obsessed with pressing women that they make advocating equality out to be a bad thing that being a feminist is senseless and pointless and not needed. Girls get made fun of for supporting getting told. They're being dramatic and they don't know what they're talking about boy snicker at the back of the class. She goes on a rant. Say that she's just bitter for not having a man is of not having a male's ego boost all the time is the world's worst to insult the not having a man to rein her in makes her an object of ridicule. I have found that most straight men. Don't want a raging feminist girlfriend and dear god. I hope that's not why i'm single. But no the do a woman who is strong and confident dare. She questioned the privileges gender gibson dare. Cb stronger than here's dare. She embarrasses him with her opinions of. She is his too embarrassed by making fun of the way she gets excited about fighting for her gender if somehow twisted women into abandoning their fight retreat to their goal cases and be told to sit still and look pretty and be silent in obedient instead of a fire. Our passion is treated like a kindling. Nothing to worry about a wannabe flame. Drunk on the idea of becoming a torch scuff it away to go out. Society has made women afraid to call themselves feminists because in the words of our great president. That would make her nasty. I'd.
The Archive Project
"2019" Discussed on The Archive Project
"Hey it's andrew the director of literary arts literary arts. We rely on our community. People like you for support to help make this podcast. And all our programming possible give today literary dash arts dot org forward slash donate welcome to the archive project. I'm andrew procter executive director of the arts. The archive project is a retrospective of some of the most engaging talks from the world's best writers for more than thirty five years of literary arts in portland support for the archive project is provided by cole. Haan cole haan shoes bags and outerwear go with you. While you work your way to extraordinary more at cole. Haan dot com in this episode. We feature some of the incredible slam poets who performed as part of verse land at twenty nineteen the citywide youth poetry slam presented by literary arts high school students across the city. Spend the year writing and competing with their peers and each april about twenty finalists compete the title portland slam champ. What is important about staying tuned for this episode. Is that these. Young poets are thrilling. To hear they will give you the chills and perhaps bring tears to your eyes and at this moment when it feels our society is cleaved with deep divisions race geography economics and age. It is so important to take the time to really listen to young voices who are after all the future. young writers. Come from all walks of life in portland and have incredible stories to tell in the spring of twenty twenty because of the pandemic unable to host for slanty as competition and chose instead to host events and workshops for students online this year. we're thrilled that verse slander. And our east side slam have been reimagined as an online poetry slam. Competition called virtual india which will take place on thursday april. Twenty ninth at five thirty pm as a public livestream but for now. Let's listen back to the live slam from twenty nineteen.
Science Fiction Remnant
"2019" Discussed on Science Fiction Remnant
"Exactly so. Why didn't we have some sort of especially specialists undis- village on whatever specialities any of the astronauts had because obviously they had kids and you can pass knowledge from generation to generation. Yeah the only knowledge was passed. Down was from sanco's dad as a story. They went from generation to generation. He was a teacher exactly especially something so does so does another question that i had and also we know that when you tell story you know there. There is a how the cold out they say. There's a loss in communication. There's always a loss in communication exactly as in the telling about us staying conscious for so long same story that he's being told over generations he's integrity of the data over time. So if you tell someone something that person is going to hear it is going to interpret. Based on how their protection to what you're saying and he's going to retain a version of what you say it in their head so that person is going to tell a third person is i can guarantee you is not going to be exactly the same. There's gonna be some changes based on the perception of that person. Mean think about it even if you change a word every ten. He's being said that's enough to over time. Have a completely different story paraphrased. So that's another thing. That i found interesting is how the priestess of this village came the stories of the you know how do they go founders and this story is somewhat and i know it's not it's never going to be exactly the same but is very coherence after three thousand years and he does. It doesn't seem right to me. It would be go. I mean i mean the skews behind. She's a priestess. there's always versus and prisses single person that he's on the duty of remember these stories tell it to the people and tell it to their predecessor so their sole job is to make sure the out anticipate of the story and the error-free again. I get that a- you if you think about. It is always going to be deborah sola. For example the praise the first priestess right tells the second priestess back to how how i was saying it dip sakon priest as is going to hear the story from the first breaches and he's going to retain version of what she says because of her perception of reality so now this person is going to is going to tell the same stories to the third priestess gonna tell version of what she thought. The story was based on her perception to the third one. The third one is going to hear it and interpret in her perception. So even on threes turnings. Let's say three generations. i look change. A lot has changed. So i i really wanna hear. I don't know if you guys have heard of the show before is is definitely new to me and i am very interested to hear from you guys if you never seen especially and you decide to watch the show. Tell me what your perception is of this. Show i find it. I think if you were a sci-fi lover and specialty legs science this show shoot appeal to you definitely and i really am really curious to see what you think about this show so if you can reach out to us on twitter or even go to our discord and let's talk about this show. Lemme lemme hear what you think. What is your perception of the show. What you liked the most about this show. Yeah absolutely join our discord channel. And let's talk about it and don't forget get excited well. This is the end of the show for now. Please let us know if you like this episode and if you have any ideas of a witch topics you'll like us to discuss in the next episode. Reach out we'll to hear from you remember. You can follow us on twitter at scifi renan and if you liked his podcast please shared and don't forget to rados in your favorite podcast platform. This will help us. Thank you so much so you next time. This science fiction remnant signing off..
KQED Radio
"2019" Discussed on KQED Radio
"2019. How do you see the state of things and where we are now where we're headed? How are you feeling? Well. It makes one want to have a shot of vodka. That's right. Well, I mean, I don't think that I can add anything to what everyone's thinking, Um It's um I mean, some of the two worst things about what? I can't even say just two words. There's many worse. The thing that I'm most worried about and concerned about is the impact on our environment by this administration. Um And, uh, especially, I mean, just recently opening up hundreds of thousands of acres of California land to Frank. When you need Millions of gallons of water to do that. So I worry about the impact of our environment and I and the way that he, of course All right. This this administration a speaks of our people are migrants are just all just people in general and the bullying and the quality has, of course, uh, It's empowered people of like mind not just in America because I travel quite a bit and his influence on a certain element. Across the board as you travel through your oppa's you travel is terribly profound. Um, the goodwill that any goodwill we've had It's a country has greatly diminished. And this sort of bowling. I don't even like.
KTRH
"2019" Discussed on KTRH
"2019, and someone is waiting for the previous to start in a movie theater. Hey, you want anything? Popcorn. Soda. No, nothing. This has been the sounds of the old world brought to you by progressive where drivers can still switch and save like his 2019 quote today at progressive dot com, Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Celebrate the magic of Love at Nem A colon take advantage of their special sweetheart package book now and save 10% on your stay, enjoy a welcome gift of strawberries and champagne Glass. The delicious daily breakfast is included visited nimah colon dot com and navigate to the sweetheart package or collar resort specialist. 844873 70 No, it cannot be combined with any other offer package, blackout dates and other restrictions apply taxes, gratuities and resort fees not included. Somewhere in Maryland, Dr. X unleashes his scratch off masterpiece Load the prizes. Cash part Don't know. Multiply them 50 times more. What happened? Touch? Yes. 100 Tides The guy that's a million dollars price up cash, but Zeb, excellent. It's a beautiful day. All five new x multipliers scratch offs from the Maryland lottery like nothing we've created before. Play safely and responsibly. Smart oil and gas back on ktrh and open phone lines for a few more minutes. 833645 45 100 are number two open lines right now. Give us a call. We'll send you the oil and gas investor guy..