40 Burst results for "31"
Club 31 Pod
A highlight from Ghanaian Youth AND Manifestations??
"Don't sit there and just be living a lackadaisical life, no please. Because you are in tune with the Holy Spirit, it's going to be super easy for you to create your reality with Him, provided you are in communication with Him, provided you are in tune with Him, provided you are connected to the source. And we're telling you, don't be mute as a Christian. We are live! Hi guys. Hi everybody. Welcome to today's episode. Hold on. Welcome to Club 31 Pod. Welcome to Club 31 Pod. Period. Last week you were met with the Cupid Shuffle. I hope you guys loved it. Actually, it was the ChaCha Slide, yo. I made a mistake. It was the ChaCha Slide. Wrong info. Wrong information. Sorry guys, sorry guys. You know, I got out of the recording and I was thinking to myself, did I say Cupid Shuffle? Yes, you did. And I picked it up. And then when the episode aired, I heard myself say Cupid Shuffle and I said, I mean ChaCha Slide. And I wish I could go back and edit it and say, right? Oh yeah. It was live. It was. It's true. The Cupid Shuffle went to the left, to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right, to the right. Now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick. Now come and kick. We have welcomed you to the club with the Cupid Shuffle. Officially. Officially. and they say no lie we actually got it right this time yeah that's funny I love that I love that hope you guys are doing good I hope you guys enjoyed the last episode it was very dense we we do acknowledge that but we hope you guys learned a thing or two and we are open to learn from you as well so please don't hesitate to share what you like what you do to improve on yourself and how you're also probably gonna implement what we said how are you doing how am I doing like how am I doing like you know like how are you how are you or how am I dancing around this question since Saturday I don't know what is wrong but every single time I ask since Saturday how are you doing you go I'm good I know because you know I noticed but you know I'm no one to say anything until like you're comfortable enough to come out and say so I thought oh she'll be fine but today again you were given the same energy well huh yeah I mean I mean I feel like you know a lot of times we like ask how are you and it's more like a formality and you the person that's being asked you're most likely to just say like oh I'm good and also the person who's asking is probably like 80 % of the time just expecting like yeah I'm good what's up how are you to have thing right so then I feel like the question hits different when you're actually going through something and someone's like how are you and you're like Tom between am I just gonna go the formality route or am I gonna be like open and actually share how I'm feeling and that's kind of where I've been okay well I hope you know that with me you could tell me I I really have time and patience to listen to if you're not feeling good like I'm actually expecting a genuine answer so burying us with so much on this episode yeah next week LA you know God willing next week if she's feeling better yeah fingers crossed I'm doing I'm doing good I just had a problem with my group we had like group work there was yeah and the members of the group where one person didn't pull her weight that's what I'm gonna see she didn't pull her weight and literally cause the whole group to crash and that was a very stressful moment in my life but guys that I don't think I have like too much going on yeah well we hope that person that person pulls your weight because the most stressful thing I would say like in a group setting is like when someone isn't doing what they're supposed to do like girl or boy all right we counting on you please do your part and right and then like she was barking out orders like taking on the leadership roles I was expecting her to like you know at least do 80 % of the work since you want to be a leader you know something that's actually interesting I read somewhere that like if you're like in a group setting and you like let's say you don't want to do too much in the group usually right when people get into a group setting nobody wants to talk nobody wants to make the first move nobody wants to like take on you know the lead role and stuff like that but people have mastered this thing where they realize that listen if I'm able to start everything people are gonna see me as like you know I know I know what's going on I'm the leader blah blah blah and then I can delegate the duties and then give myself less to do so I feel like maybe it's a strategy she's using or he sees it all right and I don't have a problem with that right yeah maximum work generally right yeah I don't got a problem with that but my problem is okay so if you delegate it the rules in the test and everyone do your way your end of the exactly where is your weight you did zero work okay well that that actually is problematic like like even if you had 2 % to do you should have said exactly because you chose a 2 % right but then I don't want to go too much into it I don't want to go too much into it cuz like I'm hope the person picks up their weight and then everything can go on smoothly right yeah well I'm gonna praise into this episode all right all right shall we pray God we thank you we worship you and we adore you we praise your holy name Lord God we ask that you will give us a tongue of the Leonard and that you would speak to us and that you would come and teach us more about even this topic that we're sharing on that as we speak Oh Father God you speak to us and that we will understand even more on this topic we pray God and we ask that your presence will fill this place and saturate this atmosphere and may everything that we do bring glory and honor to your holy name in Jesus name I praise on my thanksgiving amen amen amen alrighty so today's topic before we get into that we actually have two topics for one episode today the first being occupy julie house and it's a little bit sticky it's a little it's a topic but we still wanted to put our two cents because unfortunately we do not have the liberty of being in person and then protesting with you people and standing in solidarity with that fellow guy means so we just wanted to use our platform to talk about it to get into it a little bit so Joanna was you think about the whole protest thing okay what did I think about it well I don't know I feel like there's gonna be a long one but let's see how well I can do so hmm so first of all I must say that I've had this conversation with multiple friends and had varying opinions on what they thought about the situation and it actually took me time to figure out what I thought because everyone kind of had you know a little bit of a different approach or perspective because I feel like this topic affects everybody differently okay like yes we are all onions but the impact of the economy on everybody is different so just hearing from different people how this has affected them or what they think about the situation has been really interesting and for me I want to approach this from a personal and a Christian point of view so after talking to multiple people and hearing what everybody had to say and also doing my personal research to understand where all of this stem from and what the protest was about the question that stood out to me was concussions be a part of peaceful protests I want to be really honest and say that when I heard all of this initially my almost default reaction was to just coil and and kind of be silent and act like nothing's really going on and not contribute my voice or not contribute to what was going on okay and this is just more of I want to say a personality trait maybe I don't know if I can call it that but I want to say this is more personality based why I must say that I really I'm not a big fan of controversial and confrontational situations okay and my friend coming at me and just like all of the things that were going on I felt like you know what I want to sit this out but then it was always on my mind right seeing all of the posts pop up I mean yeah I'm not really active on social media but I do go there occasionally and then I would see multiple posts about it okay right so I was really thinking about it for for a minute I was really thinking about it for a minute and as I said the question that stood out to me was concussions be a part of peaceful protests and also what would Jesus do in the face of injustice okay okay so those questions to me I feel like I needed to break down the layers of why I was feeling like I wanted to sit this one out and not a contribute in any way that I could I obviously I'm not present in the country so I can't partake of physical protests but I can you know support through multiple different ways virtually but I didn't want to and this is me being very honest right so I started to think I started to do a bit of research like and kind of try to come in from and I learned that in in scripture it's not explicitly stated that Christians you know should or should not be part of protests however one scripture that stood out to me was that Christians are to be a light in the darkness to and speak up against injustice okay and my initial thought process when I kind of did my analysis was that I thought that protesting was a sign of disrespect for authority and so with that mindset I didn't want to engage in such activities right to be a part of it however I came to realize that through more introspection and through learning that we're also called to call out and to condemn evil and so though the Bible may not have specifically addressed protesting God does not stand for injustice so after finding out this I started to think okay what do I say how do I act what can I do you know asking myself all of these really important questions and one thing that I acknowledged when I was doing the research of the protesting was that the protest was a peaceful one and as Christians as well we are called to be peacemakers and so I don't expect myself or a Christian to support a protest that is not peaceful.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "31" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Behind that front a lot colder for the day on Sunday upper 50s and lower 60s news I'm meteorologist Steve Rudin in the first Alert Weather Center we're at 83 in Centerville 82 in downtown DC it's 3 31 this is wtop news everything you need every time you listen the wtop producers desk is wired by IBEW local 26 where electrical contractors come to grow good afternoon I'm Shawn Anderson and I'm Nick Ionelli Mike Jokaitis is our producer top story we're following for you the GOP battle to become the next speaker of the house House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan was the first lawmaker to jump into the race now House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has thrown his hat into the ring wtops Mitchell Miller today on the hill congressman Jordan tells his Republican colleagues
Crypto Banter
A highlight from Is Uptober Real? Data Shows What Comes Next For Bitcoin!
"Is October real? Is Bitcoin really going to see an expansionary move in the month of October and for the rest of Q4 or is this simply a fake out narrative and are we going to see Bitcoin come down to that major 25k level and flip bearish for October and the rest of Q4? Well in today's video I'm going to dive into the data which is giving us a telltale sign of Bitcoin's next move and today want to break down what the data is showing from historical past cycles to work out what we might do this October and beyond for the rest of Q4 2023. I've got the bullish case I also had the bearish case and then at the end I'm going to present my argument what I think may happen as well as showing you what you need to know on the charts. So the first thing to note is the current Bitcoin structure that we're in. If you go into the monthly chart you can see that we are currently wedged in the middle of a key range between the 25k region and the 31 .5k region and the real question investors are asking right now is are we going to make a push up towards the extremity of the range high here or are we simply going to come back down and October becomes one big fake out back down to the 25k region and then simply teeter on the edge of a breakdown. So I want to dig into the data now and look at what has happened historically to give us an indication as to whether we will push up towards the top of this range or down towards the bottom of this range as Bitcoin continues to range there are opportunities both on the long side and the short side and of course with altcoins as well to take advantage. The first thing I want to point out is that Bitcoin had a green September it's one of the only times in Bitcoin's history that we've had a green September and actually four out of the five times Bitcoin has been green in September we've seen continuation bullish continuation into the month of October. So most of the time when we do have a green September we also have a green October as you can see here four out of the five times have resulted in not only positive price performance in October but also often that extends beyond into the month of November and December as well and corresponding to that we know that Q4 is Bitcoin's strongest period we have a mean performance for Bitcoin in quarter four of 93 .38 % compared to the other quarters which are only 6%, 33 % and 4 .67%. 60 % of quarter fours end up bullish for Bitcoin so that is obviously in Bitcoin's favor. What's also in Bitcoin's favor is the fact that last time Bitcoin finished up during September of a pre -halving year as Ran points out we had another 70 % rally in the last quarter of that year that was back in 2015 and this is only a sample size of one so you have to take it with a grain of salt but the more encouraging data set here is that green September four out of five times has led to a green October and of course Q4 is typically a good period for Bitcoin and October is typically a good period for Bitcoin but coming in as the second most bullish month in Bitcoin's history on average behind November which is by far the most bullish month in Bitcoin's history. So are we coiling up for an October and potentially an extension into an upvember with November being a strong month? Well there is definitely an argument for this and I want to read this post by Game4One which reads out October a short story which kind of pinpoints the reason why the market could go up in October and he says price up on a random October due to seasonality effects as we just looked through the seasonal data before this repeats one to two times one of these may just be a random coincidence market participants learn a pattern and get programmed to believe up prices during the period aka investors chasing positive returns during Q4.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "31" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"National co -operative contract pricing for all markets discover better pricing today at Safeware Inc .com Dave Deline WTOP traffic. Over to 7 News First Alert meteorologist Steve Rudin. Our great weather continues for the remainder of the afternoon with lots of sunshine and temperatures anywhere from the lower to middle 80s moving into the overnight hours patchy fog will likely develop similar to we had earlier this morning wake up temperatures will be in the 50s for your Thursday a mix of sun and clouds 75 to 80 degrees for a daytime high middle to upper 70s to around 80 on Friday as a cold front advances from the west this cold from being showers late Friday night into the day on Saturday high Saturday middle to upper 60s but winds are going to start to kick up and behind that front a lot colder for the day on Sunday upper 50s and lower 60s news I'm meteorologist Steve Rudin in the first Alert Weather Center we're at 83 in Centerville 82 in downtown DC it's 3 31 this is wtop news everything you need every time you listen the wtop producers desk is wired by
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from America is a mess and it's apparent to voters.
"We get it. You're busy. You don't have time to waste on the mainstream media. That's why Salem News Channel is here. We have hosts worth watching, actually discussing the topics that matter. Andrew Wilkow, the next D 'Souza, Brandon Tatum, and more. Open debate and free speech you won't find anywhere else. We're not like the other guys. We're Salem News Channel. Watch any time on any screen for free 24 -7 at snc .tv and on local now channel 525. The Mike Gallagher Show. An illegal alien. When the cops arrest them, they don't know who they are. And immediately they say asylum seeker asylum. You can't touch them. They're untouchable. In the ReliefFactor .com studios, here's Mike. This portion of our show brought to you by Balance of Nature. Pay attention. They've got a very special discount that's offered to friends and family. And by family, I'm talking to you. You're my extended, sometimes dysfunctional family. You hear me every day talk about Balance of Nature. How crucial it is to our lives. The real value is the effort that goes into delivering such a high quality supplement. Balance of Nature is pretty simple. It's fruits and veggies in capsule form. And whether you order online at balanceofnature .com or call their direct phone number at 800 -246 -8751, you got to use the promo code MIKEG to get a special offer of 35 % off. This is 31 whole fruits and vegetables powdered using an advanced vacuum cold process packed in the capsule form. If you've been on the fence about giving Balance of Nature a try, this is your day to start. Call 800 -246 -8751, use the discount code MIKEG or order online balanceofnature .com and don't forget to use the discount code MIKEG to get 35 % off balanceofnature .com. Here's the numbers, by the way. I want to give you a to the moment update. Now, I haven't gotten an update in the last 15 minutes from preborn. This is preborn day on the Mike Gallagher show. We need you. We need you big time. We got to save lives. And the preborn mission is real simple. They provide ultrasounds to women who are considering an abortion. We know statistically about 85 % of women who see their baby and hear the heartbeat with an ultrasound choose life.
Crypto Banter
Fresh update on "31" discussed on Crypto Banter
"Here we go. So the judge ruled that the court found as a matter of law, Ripple's XRP sales and exchanges are not securities. XRP sales by Ripple executives are not securities. XRP's distribution to developers are not securities. And by the same ruling, Matic, Solana, and all those, there is a ruling, a judgment that they are not securities. What happened then was in the middle of the case, because the case is not finished, the SEC tried to get to appeal the decision in the middle of the case. They asked, they called it an interlocutory appeal and they filed a motion to appeal that part of the judge's rejected the SEC's motion to appeal the Ripple ruling. So the judge rejected and said, you can't appeal the Ripple ruling, which is amazing. What does it actually mean? It means that the SEC is now taking another loss. It means that in order for the SEC to appeal the ruling, they're going to have to wait until the end of the case. What the judge said, and I wonder if I can just find a, the judge found no substantial ground for difference of opinion about her findings and did not agree that an appeal would materially advance the case towards conclusion. She also said a decision did not conflict with the 30, the July 31 ruling by the judge Radcliffe in Manhattan, who said the SEC had a plausible claim on Terraform Labs. And therefore the judge said, look, you cannot appeal this, which means that for now, and until they can appeal, we have a ruling in our favor that all these tokens actually aren't securities, which is amazing. When can they appeal? Well, first of all, we've got to finish this trial, which I think now will go on for a long time. Then there's an appeal. Then you've got to set appeal dates and you've got to go to court. I reckon we're three to five years away from this judgment actually being appealed, which means that for the next three to five years, it's business as usual for us. And we, I'm not gonna say we don't have anything to worry about because that's not true because we always have something to worry about.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The People of God
"His people are protected by God. You may think, but Ethan, we look through church history and they're martyred. Yes, because God had chosen for them to go through that persecution and to go through that martyrdom. One of my favorite eras of church history that I've just been in baked with and I'm reading a book right now with my family is through the book and life of Jonathan Edwards. I love the era of the Puritans. When Charles I goes up into Edinburgh in Scotland, if you haven't read these story, they're the covenanters who are these individuals to that refused compromise on the truths of scripture and they covenanted by their own blood thumbprint on a covenant saying, we will stand by scripture alone. Those people were slaughtered in the streets of Edinburgh where historians say that blood flowed through that city like a river. Can you imagine that? Well, God, why would you do that? Look at the example those individuals set because they knew that their life was not their own, their body was not their own and if this isn't God's will for this to happen, then so be it. And the example that they have set for us today and we're like, oh, America is such a bad spot, all borders and this. God's in control, get off your high horse and just trust in God and pray in God. I'm not saying we can't be active in politics, we should be with Christian individuals but how dare you think that we are somehow God's chosen nation as the country of America, we are not. God rises emperors up, he crushes emperors down, he rises civilizations up, he crushes civilizations down and far be it from us to think that this is the bleakest time in history, then you know nothing about church history. But we are still protected by God. Even if our body is killed, Jesus talks about this in Luke, do not fear those who can kill the body but fear those who cannot just kill the body but also the soul and that is Christ. Because we know where our trajectory is, we will enter into that Sabbath rest. His people have no claim to anything of their own. His people, guys, this is the biggest one that if we walk away with nothing else today, his people, you and I, if we're in Christ, we exist for his glory and for his majestic purpose. Why? Because his people were purchased with his own blood. The final three, his people comprise a spiritual family united together in Christ. There's no races, there's no ethnicities, there's no slave, there's no Greek, there's no Jude, there's none of that. We are all together if we are together in Christ. That goes much deeper than any surface level connectivity we have here on the earth. Christ is this glue that melds us together that is only in the unity of Christ that comprises his 1 Peter 2, 9. We are a chosen family. We are the church local here, but then there is the church universal of our brothers and sisters around the world that are sharing in that common bond of Christ. Might we have slight theological variances? Of course, I guarantee in this room we have a hundred different variances in theology, but what we do understand is that salvation is by grace alone, in faith alone, through the work of Christ alone. That is what we know and that is what we can agree on. Last two things. His people will live, die, breathe, eat, and drink, what, for God's glory. Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. If you're a garbage person, you're taking out garbage and you're thinking, what am I doing, do it for the glory of God. If you're scrubbing the bottom of boat barnacles and stuff like that, do it for the glory of God. If you're a receptionist, do it for the glory of God. If you're a real estate agent, do it for the glory of God. If you're a lawyer, yes, do it for the glory of God. If you're a mom, do it for the glory of God. If you're a father, for God's glory. Everything you do needs to be done to bring exaltation, rejoicing, and majestic glory to God. Do you view God this way? Is that who God is for you? If that is not how you are living your life, if that is not how you view God, then you have made God in your own image. Because the God of the Bible has all power and all authority. Everything in this earth is subjected unto him. With the blink of an eye, a wisp of his hand, this entire universe will cease to exist should God will it. So I don't need to worry about climate change, I don't need to worry about aliens, I don't need to worry about any of this other stuff, because God is in control. We must live this way, glorify God this way, because God is in control. And we must give God glory. And even if you are a person that is bedridden, and you can't get out of bed, and you think that your life is over, one of our elders' fathers is a beautiful testament to this. Faithful man, pursuing after Christ his whole life, and even though he can barely turn, he's still glorifying God. As long as there is breath in my lungs, I pray that we can follow that testimony. That if we find ourselves paralyzed or debilitated or whatever else, that we can still bring God glory, even in the horrific circumstances, we can bring God glory. But we so often get so focused on ourselves, we lose focus of the majesty and glory of God. We must remind ourselves who God is, and we must be completely dependent on God. So we must always begin with God, then work backwards to ourselves. The world tells us the exact opposite. The world says, look deeper into yourself, and you can figure it out for yourself. The culture, news, media, and everything else is continually promoting and encouraging you to dig deeper, and you'll find the true meaning of happiness. Here's what we need to remember. I belong to Christ, I was created to glorify him, I was purchased. That finds so much solace in my own soul. So as we finish up Acts chapter 18, you're like, Ethan, we've got seven more verses, don't worry. Get back into verse 10. I have many people, we answered this. So how long did Paul stay there? Verse 11, he stayed there for one year and six months doing what? Teaching the word of God. That is the priority for Christians. If you're his people, you should have a desire to hear the word of God proclaimed. You should have the desire to read the word of God. Verse 12, here's what's great. When you look at verse 12, down to verse 17, remember what I said in the beginning, when Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, why did he expel the Jews from Rome? Because they were continually creating an uproar against the Christians. Do you think that the pro -counsel in this province knew that? Yeah, because it was issued by the emperor. And so what happened here? God's promise comes to fulfillment when he says, don't worry about anything. No harm's going to happen to you because I have many people in the city. And then look what happens. The Jews rose up against Paul and Paul's like, here we go again. I'm going to have to defend myself. This man persuades people to worship God contrary to the law. Paul's about to open his mouth. I would love to see his pause probably. And then Galileo is like, he puts them in their place. Not because Galileo was a righteous person, he wasn't a believer, but because he was being used by God for God's purpose to protect Paul. And so this happened, and look at what happens with this. The Jews were so outraged, they took the leader of the synagogue and beat him in front of Galileo. You talk about a flip. Instead of beating Paul, who do they beat? The leader of the synagogue. And no, let me quickly iterate. When you read in 1 Corinthians, this is not the same. So Synaethus, wow, Sophonis, as is mentioned in 1 Corinthians. Sophonis, wow. These are Greek names, I tell you what. But what happened? Galileo was not concerned about anything. So what does this mean for us? As we see that God is continually protecting people. We must understand that the deeper we study God, the deeper we know God, the better you understand who you are. It's not the other way around. It's not starting with yourself. You start with God, you'll know who you are better. Let me say this again, too. If you are in Christ, you are one of his people. No matter what you may think or feel, you are not alone because Christ lives in you. The word that we read, the word that we hear, it gives life. We are owned by Christ. There is no place we can go, no mountain too high or valley too deep. And I leave us with this promise in Romans 8 verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? And we as a people of God, God is for us.
The Dan Bongino Show
Fresh "31" from The Dan Bongino Show
"There was probable cause to return an indictment, but this case is like no other case. Davis is being held without bail. WLS News Time 1204 on the roads Kennedy inbound O 'Hare to the Bern down to 34 minutes 31 back out to the from downtown. Eden's you are delayed free inbound from Lake Cook to the junction outbound as well. Eisenhower just 29 minutes in from Thorndale to the old post office outbound 26 exit ramp to cost here still closed an investigation for a fatal crash involving a semi and a pedestrian. 25 minutes inbound I 3 55 to the drive delay free on the out in the van Ryan 18 minutes either way from downtown. Next traffic update in 15 minutes. Get news on the hour the half and when it breaks continuous coverage at wlsam .com. I'm breck oval 890 wls news your old furnace is have you ever covered a carpet stain with a rug ignored a leaky faucet pretended your half painted living room is supposed to look like that well you're not alone we've all got unfinished home projects
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Cause of Conversion
"Thank you gang, good morning everyone. Typically when I'm preparing a sermon I do my very best to make sure that it's balanced and here's what I'm looking for when I say balanced. There are lots of ways you can deliver a passage of the Bible and I'm trying my best to keep some parts of the sermon theological and some parts practical. If you aren't familiar with that first word, as I wasn't until I was like in my late teens, theological meaning I want us to think, I want us to think right thoughts about God. That's theology. And then practical, based on what we know about God, I want us to act. So a sermon, I try my best to balance them, theological thinking about God and practical acting on what we know about God. And yet when you go through the Bible, some parts of it are more one than the other. And that's okay, that's the way the Bible works. Today is going to be one of those messages that are a little bit more heavy on the theological side than the practical side. So on days like that you have to pray and you have to ask God, remember what Jesus said? We're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind. So I'm going to ask that God would grant a very attentive mind. Because I'm going to ask you to worship the Lord your God through the word with a mind that thinks right thoughts about God. So Lord, that's our goal. We want to think. You've given us a mind, a working mind to be able to think. It's unlike the animals who can't think didactically like we can, but we can rationalize. We can think in ways that honor you and we can think in ways that don't honor you. So I'm asking that you would grant first, that you would grant in this room a very attentive mind, that we would all aim our minds toward God to tune out other thoughts and to just spend a little time on a Sunday thinking about nothing else but the greatness of the glory and the beauty and the majesty of our great God. So help us now as we worship through the word to love you by thinking about you. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. We're in John chapter four. So if you have a Bible, grab it, open it, go to John. That's in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, fourth book of the New Testament and open to the fourth chapter. We're almost done with it, sort of almost done with it. We're about three quarters of the way through with it. Let me catch you up as you're tuning there. Jesus has been having a conversation with an immoral Samaritan woman, and no one wants to be around this woman, but Jesus did. And so he intentionally met her at the well. And boy, what a meeting they've had. John, the writer of this book, records the true historical account of what happened between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, and we've gone through most of it. Let me tell you what we've seen so far. Right now, Jesus has revealed certain things to this woman that she's gone away from this conversation knowing only one thing. She doesn't know about the cross, she doesn't know about the grave, she doesn't know about anything except she knows one thing. I met a man who told me everything there was to know about me. And she runs off and tells the townspeople, who she's going to in our passage today. She doesn't know about him being a savior yet. She just knows, I met a man who has the ability to tell me things that a mere man doesn't have. So she thinks, I just met a prophet. That's it. That's all she knows. Last Sunday, if you were here, as you're reading through John 4, John takes a pause, and he tells us this other lesson that's related that Jesus wanted to teach his disciples about this. And here's, in a nutshell, what that lesson was. Jesus says, look around you guys, God's field is full and it's ready for the picking with women and people just like this woman. The time has come when God's mission field is full of women like this one I'm talking to, women and men and children whom God wants to save. They're unconverted and God wants to bring them to the truth. And so now John is going to bring us back to what happened with the woman. So there's a story about the woman, I'm going somewhere with this, follow me, story about the woman, an intentional pause, and then it returns to the narrative about the woman. If you were paying close attention last week, if anybody comes up to me afterwards and says they knew this, I'm going to be shocked. If you were paying close attention last week, I skipped three verses. Usually I go one verse, then the next verse, then the next verse. We don't skip anything. And that's a big no -no. We don't skip verses. And so I skipped three verses because as I was studying, I realized these really belong with the text I'm going to show you today. So I purposely skipped them to save them for today. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at those three verses I skipped, which is found in verse 28, 29, and 30. Then we're going to skip the passage I preached on last Sunday, which is verse 31 through 38. And we're going to take the part I skipped and join it to the part where you'll see why. Can I show you why? This reads, this portion, you're going to go, wow, that reads so smoothly. It's almost like there was no interruption. Watch how smooth the narrative goes now, okay? So starting in verse 28, where I skipped, 29 and 30, then jumping down to 39, the narrative reads smooth. Check this out. So the woman, she's just finished talking with Jesus, and now this is what happens after. So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, he told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it's no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. Now, there is a primary lesson that most preachers, when they preach this passage or if you've ever been in a Bible study or a Sunday school class, there's one primary lesson that's being taught here. In the job of an interpreter, you when you're home and you open your Bible in the morning with your cup of coffee or your spot of tea or whatever you drink and you're reading the Bible, you're all interpreters at that moment, there's only one lesson. And the job is to get at that one lesson. What did the author mean? If we get somewhere else, we've missed the interpretation. So our job is to find out what John meant by what he wrote and then get at that meaning. The meaning of this is not real difficult. It's very simple. Here's what happened. A woman had an encounter with Jesus and she went home and told everybody about it. That's it. That's the story. That's what happened. So if this passage is preached a hundred times this year in a hundred different churches all over the world, 99 out of a hundred times, here's what the sermon's going to be about. She's a witness. She's really the first witness in the Gospel of John. And so the message is going to be about witnessing. And they'll tell you, go home and do likewise. And they'll take you through it piece by piece, showing you how she witnessed, because she did a good job, and they'll say, this is how you witnessed. And I'm telling you, that is the faithful way to handle this text. A hundred percent of the time, that's the way to do it. I'm not going to do that today. Here's why. Knowing the majority of the people at our church and knowing that the majority of you have been in church your whole life, you've probably heard this preached 20 times. And I'm knowing that I could give you the main lesson in about 30 seconds, which I just did. I want to show you how the Bible can be like an onion, like an onion, and how you could read this. My grandmother's 105. You're probably getting tired of me telling you that. She woke up this morning and read her Bible for close to an hour. I'm telling you. You know how I know? She's done it her whole life. She's probably read this passage 105 times, I'm exaggerating. Every time, there's some new layer of the onion that gives her food for her soul. I want to peel back a layer. Again, there's only one meaning, but there's lots of ways, vantage points, to look at that one meaning and glean new food from this never -ending nourishment that is God's word. In narratives like the one we're reading, especially the gospel narratives where you're reading about a true historical account, this really happened in history, and where there's lots of different people in the story, you can look at it from her perspective or the perspective of Jesus or the perspective of the Samaritans. If there were other people, we could read it from different perspectives, and every time you do, you peel back a new layer of the onion. Isn't the Bible awesome? It'll keep you nourished for the rest of your life. Well, this week, I looked at the woman and I said, Lord, I'll preach this. If that's what you want, I'll just go and I'll preach a message on witnessing. I just couldn't do it. I wanted to peel back a little bit and look at this from the lens of the Samaritans. I wanted to see how it was that God converted them through first this woman and then through an encounter with Jesus. And so this morning, what we're going to do is we're going to do a case study in conversion. The Samaritans were my focus this week, which is why I've entitled this sermon, the 20th sermon, by the way, in our series through John, The Cause of Conversion. Would you give me two minutes before we start picking apart this text? Would you give me two minutes to define conversion? Because I imagine that there might be a lot of different definitions that people would come up with as to what that word means. What is that? Most people may have grown up believing, as I did, that conversion was the same exact thing as being born again. It isn't. Oh, it's related. As a matter of fact, you might think of conversion as the other side of the coin of being born again. Let me explain. Get your thinking cap on. Here we go. Being born again, theologians have a term for it just like they do conversion, and the term is regeneration. How many of you have heard the term regeneration before? How many of you have read the book of Genesis? Genesis is the beginning. When you were born, you had a Genesis. When you were born again, you had a re -Genesis. God made your birth happen again on the inside. Conversion is not the same thing, and here's how. What happens on the inside when you're born again, when God takes your dead soul, which is the way you were born, you're dead in your sins, so was I, when God makes you alive to Christ, that happens at the soul or the heart level, and at that very same instant, you mind falls, but at that very same instant, after God makes you alive, something happens in the mind. What happens in the mind is conversion, and it's really important. Here's why it's important. Look what Jesus said. This is going to get juicy. Jesus said, truly I say to you, unless you are, say the word, and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So you tell me, is conversion important? You better believe it. Here's the word Jesus used. He used the Greek word, strepho, which simply means, look on the screen, to be changed, or a better definition, to turn and go another direction. Someone is born again. At that moment, their eyes are open to see the truth. Once that happens at the soul level, something happens instantaneously in the mind. In the mind, you are able to believe the truth about Jesus. You see him as he truly is. You no longer see your old life the way that it was. You turn away from it, and you turn to something new. That is the moment when conversion begins. It continues throughout your life. God continues to make you into something new. We call that process sanctification. It starts the moment you're converted, and it continues throughout your life. He's continually renewing your mind, changing how you see first God, then you, then the world, then every little thing continues this process of being converted into the image of Jesus Christ. So conversion is the flip side of the coin of regeneration, but it's not exactly the same thing. caused Conversion is by having the eyes of your heart opened, listen to these words, to a knowledge of God that you were prior blind to, and it's this spiritual knowing and believing that I see in this text. Martyn Lloyd -Jones said something about conversion that I think sums it up better than anybody else. Look what Martyn Lloyd -Jones said. He said conversion is the first exercise of the new nature. So once you're born again, the first thing you do, the first act is conversion in ceasing from old forms of life, my old sinful life, and starting a new life. It's the first action of the regenerate soul in moving from something, something I used to be, to this new life. That's the best definition of conversion that I could find, a way that I think will be helpful to you in your life in understanding salvation. In this text, I see a great case study of how conversion works. These people went from believing something to suddenly having their eyes opened to see something new. If you did what I did, some people, it's funny, they think that preachers somehow have some supernatural funnel from God where he pours information in your head. That is not at all what happens to a preacher. It's just discipline. That's all it is. Discipline to study the Scriptures and sit in it and sit in it, and then when you're done, sit in it some more. And God does for a preacher what he would do for you if you spent as much time in a text as I do. I spend on average about 20 hours a week preparing for a sermon, roughly 20 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. If you spent as much time as I did in this little text, I promise you, you'd start to see little observations popping out, little things you're like, oh, I never saw that before. And if you spent as much time with me this week looking at this text and looking at it, looking at it, looking at it, can I show you a few things that might start popping out to you? There are three because statements in this text. If you're reading in the morning in 20 minutes and you're reading the story about the woman at the well, you're not going to stop on the word because, would you? Because it's just the because. No one stops at the word because. But if you did stop, you would see the cause of things. Can I show you these three because statements in the text? Take a look. I put them on the screen for you. Well here's the whole text. You'd see these three because statements. Here are the three because statements popping out. Put those up for me, Logan. You have the first one? Poor Logan. The first because statement, we'll get to the second one in a second, many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. So they believed in him because of the woman's testimony. Look at the second because statement. Now Logan. And many more believed in him because of his word. But now here's the cause that changed my whole trajectory of this sermon, verse 42. They said to the woman, look at this, look church, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves. And we know, it's the first time this word is used in the chapter, we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. Church, look at me. Something caused the water bottle. What was it? Me. I pushed it. All I want to do is look at this text as a case study of what caused you to be born again, to be converted. I want to look at this as a case study to see what caused them to be converted so that you will know first how to pray for your unbelieving family, but second even more importantly, to know whether or not you're converted. There are lots of people who've been going to church for years who may not be converted. There is a major difference between being convinced and being converted. There is a major difference between being convinced about Jesus and being converted by Jesus. Not all belief is the same kind of belief. I'm telling you, I want to show you this morning, based on verse 42, there's a journey, a progression of conversion that I want to show you in this text. They were convinced and called by this woman's testimony, but they were not yet converted because they did not yet know him. There is a kind of belief in Jesus that does not cause conversion. It's the kind that maybe the brother of Jesus was talking about when he wrote this. Look on the screen. You say that you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Well, good for you. Even the demons say the word. Wait a second. And they tremble in terror. So according to James, there's a category of belief that does not cause a creature, a human creature or a demonic creature, to be converted. So just because you see belief in the Bible doesn't mean it's the same kind of belief that leads to conversion. My prayer all week this week is that God would bring us somebody who needed to be converted today. What I aim to show you in this case study is the call to salvation used by God. This woman was used by God to invite them. Being convinced about Jesus. And then finally being converted to Jesus. Here's the big idea. I'm going to spell it out for you. If you want to snap a photo of this with your phone so that you can't forget it, it's fine with me. Some people are convinced because of a personal testimony. And God uses personal testimonies to convince people. Others are convinced because of a personal experience. Lots of people have had spiritual experiences and God uses those to convince people. But there's only one cause of conversion. The cause of conversion is knowing Christ as personal Savior. Let me show you this in the text. I'm going to split the big idea into three parts. Everybody still with me? Part number one. Some people, they're called during someone's testimony. They feel God calling to them. And they're convinced when they hear someone give a personal testimony. But it's not the same thing as being converted. Here's what I'm going to show you in this text. God has been pleased down through church history to use people's personal testimonies. To draw people to himself. Theologians call this an effectual call. He calls out to people, come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. By the testimony of someone that you love or a friend. And people feel and hear God's call. But it's not the same thing as being converted. Let me show you that right here in the text. Verse 28, 29 and 30 and then verse 39. Look what it says here. So the woman left her water jar. There's lots we could say about that. She left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people. So now she's suddenly an evangelist. Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? God in this moment is using a vessel, a woman's mouth who just had an encounter with Jesus to call people to come. Come meet Jesus. That's what's happening here. They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed. And now based on what you just read about James, you should go, wait a minute, what kind of belief? So glad you asked. We're going to get into that, okay? Many from Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony he told me all that I ever did. So remember something. Follow me, church. All she knows at this point is that she met a prophet.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
Fresh update on "31" discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"So unlike many cases, whether or not he takes the stand, he will in some sense, it is possible his, quote, testimony will be heard in a way if the government chooses to play or elicit parts of the accounts he's given before trial. And so the defense may have no choice but to grapple with that and start to get in what is Sam's narrative? If you were the defense, would you want to put Sam on the stand or would you rather not? Yeah, this is always a very difficult decision. And it's also particularly hard because I don't know him. I think one thing to know about a criminal trial is the way it's structured, the government goes first. They put their case on, then the defense goes and it is at that point, the defendant has to decide whether to testify. And I think there's a reason for that, which is to say, you would want to see how the government's case plays out. When the defendant testifies, the entire trial changes, whether we like it or, you know, the judge will instruct the jury that under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, the defendant has no burden and does not have to testify against themselves or incriminate themselves. It's always the government's burden to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. But regardless, the defendant takes the stand. The jury is not, it's just human nature. They're not going to think about, did the government prove it anymore? They're going to think about, do I believe this guy? If they believe him, he's acquitted. Or if some believe him, there's a hung jury. And if they don't believe him, and it could be something immaterial too, could be something they think he lied about, something that's totally unrelated to the case, going to jail. So it's very dangerous to call the defendant. However, you may be in a situation where the government puts their case on and you are going to lose. There is no way you're winning. You're only shot as a Hail Mary. Okay, let's put them on. The other side of the coin is it's very powerful when a defendant testifies. It makes it much harder for the jury to convict. They're not dealing with characterizations of a person anymore. It's dealing with that person. They have heard the person speak intimately in a courtroom. And even in cases I've had where a defendant testified, even when the jury ends up convicting, it often takes them longer to get there because it's a harder decision when a human being testifies to them. It just feels like given Sam's behavior up until this point that he himself would want to testify. For sure. You're absolutely right. And one thing to note is his decision and his alone. There are some decisions that the trial lawyer for a defendant controls and there are some decisions there to the defendants. Whether or not to plead guilty, whether or not to testify, that is his decision alone. His lawyers can say, this is a crazy idea. If he wants to do it, he gets to do it. One thing I wanted to say to Kayvon's earlier point about how he's going to, or the defense generally will try to play up this image, like, you know, he was young, you know, he didn't really know what was going on, other people working for him. I actually feel like up until the collapse of FTX was revealed that he played up this image about like being young and, you know, wearing the shorts and the T-shirts and the crazy hair and all that. And so even just in this past year, like after everything was revealed, I noticed random comments online. Mostly it's like people that they're non crypto people, as far as I can tell, who say things like, oh, he was just a kid. And it's like, he's 31 years old. Like most American men have children by the age of 31. Like, you know, but but they still say these things. So anyway, maybe it'll be effective. We'll see. And so just before we continue on to, you know, the testimony, which I do want to get to in this opening, what do you think the defense's strongest case will be? Is it just to play up that image or or is there like anything that you think will directly counter, you know, these like especially when you were saying the customer fraud is probably the most likely win for the prosecution? Do you think that there is any strong case the defense can make against that charge or any of them in particular? I think the way Sam put it earlier, this Sam put it earlier.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Reaching Out / Great Ideas for Evangelism
"We talked about survival last night. You know there's a saying I've always thought, don't wait until you're thirsty to dig a well. A lot of times we wait until the 15th round before we've been knocked down, before we go for help. Isn't that true? Sometimes we have to hit that bottom bottom, I guess. Just don't take things for granted. Good lives, lives that are together are not my accident. They're my right choices. The world just says you're lucky, but we know it's not luck. We know it's not luck. You don't order godly kids in the catalog. I'm a godly kid, respectful. You don't order me, you have to build lives. And I tell you what, we live in a day that, I tell you what, it's kind of sad. God doesn't give you wisdom. To see things how he sees them, and actually to see through things. To see through the deception of Satan. Look, two things I begged for in my life. I begged to be a solider, and I begged to raise my kids. He used to beg God for wisdom, because I knew his past was going to be greater than me. He used to say, if you want to mess up your life, that's your choice, but you're not messing your kids' lives up. And I don't know, I guess God, I just begged God for wisdom, and then James, he says he'll give it to you liberally if you ask. And I do believe he has. I got a lady in my church, my secretary, I'm going to be the secretary. She said, I think there is certainly something about raising kids. And if I really even know what I said, I just need to ask her. I think she wrote down everything I've ever said. And it's nice to have people listen. You know, it's ironic, people in my church now are more like me than my own kids. That's just the way it is. They're more like their pastor. They've been influenced by their pastor. My people have been influenced by me. They've been sitting under my preaching group, some of them, for 29 years. So, you know, they actually thank and remind me of how my kids would be. I see my kids, and they've kind of sometimes drifted away from different ways. And it kind of hurts me, but they become like their pastor. And, you know, so we just need to try to encourage each other, you know, hold together. You know, we're one body of many members. Amen. I think I heard one time that a car has about 30 ,000 parts. You know, it takes all of them to put together. It only takes one of them to miss malfunctions before you're in trouble. Isn't that the truth? You know, when one malfunction, you know, you have maybe eight cylinders on your car. You know, when one of them malfunctions, you lose a lot more than one -eighth of your power. Anyone in those cars knows if one plug or one wire is misfiring, it's like you lose 70 % of your power. And, you know, we got to make sure we don't malfunction on starry again. Mm -hmm. Joe, Steve will bring her own water tonight, because I'm not falling for that one yet. You know, we just need to work together as a body. You know, hey, I always tell my people, the devil only needs one heart to work out of. Don't let your heart be that one he works out of. It's a dangerous place to be, too. And, well, I think we have enough work out here. We have enough people that I think God's work, besides having Christians, amen, but Ezekiel, if you're Ezekiel 33 now, verse, I just thought we'd start at verse 31. It says, and they came unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear my words, but they will not do them. For with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after covetousness, passions, desires, things like that. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, for they hear thy words, but they do them not. They were too powerful at first, aren't they? Man, I just read that. They point that verse, so many people are, they sit in church, and, you know, they may say, oh, it's a good message, whatever, but they just don't do them. God says, happier little do these things, amen, you know? And just knowing them and not doing them actually just makes you miserable, probably, right? Some people just have enough religion to bug them instead of bless them. Isn't that the truth? Yeah, just enough to just make them miserable without making them joyful. One guy I've told, and I've heard this all the time, but he's going to tell me in church, he says, the pastor's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, you know? So I'm here to try to disturb you where you're comfortable and comfort you where you're hurting. Amen? And so we come here tonight and turn with me now to Mark, Matthew, Mark, I think, with the gospel, where Christ is portrayed as his servant. You know, the four gospels in Matthew, God is portrayed as a king, as a king, and Mark as a servant, and Mark and Luke as a son of man, and John, the son of God. And we find here one of my passages I love, and I don't know, anyone have favorite, I love, I have so many favorite passages, I guess, but I like this one because it's about four men, I guess, a four, but I guess I can't even say for sure, I'm sure there were probably men that took a man of palsy that was paralyzed through the Peter's house roof to get him to Jesus to be healed. It says there in chapter two, no, actually this just follows where I talked about it the other day about the leper that was healed, and Jesus said in verse 44, right before that in chapter one, see thou say nothing to any man that would go thy way and show thyself to the priests and offer for like cleanliness these things which Moses commanded for a testimony to them. But he went out and began to publicize it much, to blaze abroad the matter, and so much that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city. I mean, God, Jesus at the end is so well known now, it's hard for him to even, you know, move and around stuff, and set him up in the desert places, and they came to him from every quarter. So we come here now, it says here, and again, he entered into Capernaum, you know, that's kind of where he kind of made his home, where Peter was after some days, and it was noise that he was in the house. And straightway, many were gathered together in so much that there was no room for them, no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door. And he preached the word unto them, and they came unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four, and when they could not come nigh unto him from the press, in other words, the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken a nub, they let down a bad brim the sick of the palsy lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he sent unto the sick of the palsy, saying, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. And there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, you know, isn't that amazing? Here in this crowd, there are some hearts that were very, very ungodly. Here they are just looking for a reason to cause trouble, looking for a reason, observing just with a critical spirit, you know, and sadly, they can be in a church, someone comes just to be a critic, but there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why does this man thus speak blaspheming? Who can forgive sins but God only? See, they knew exactly what Jesus was saying he was. Jesus said, I am God, you know, and that made them angry because they didn't want to receive it except that, and immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye of these sayings in your hearts? Whether it is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and take up thy bed and walk. But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins. He said to the sick of palsy, I say unto thee, Arise and take up thy bed and go thy way unto thy house, and immediately he arose, took up his bed, and went forth before them all, insomuch that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this faction. Isn't that amazing? You know, I love that. You know how exciting when God's moving in the hearts of people. When you have a revival, you know, it's not about one person. It's about what God is doing in the hearts of people. And your testimony has brought tears to my eyes. You know, man, isn't that great? Somebody cared enough to go out and make that extra effort, and here he is in church today, almost waiting ahead on the sight of somebody who cared for his soul. You know, I had one psalmist who said, There's no way I cared for my soul. You know, tonight, that's why we're here. We're one beggar telling another beggar before we found bread telling people. I thank God I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. And I tell you, I didn't have to make us go to church. We loved church. We loved revival meetings. Loved evangelists. You know, that was just kind of the highlight of the year, really. It was like the Super Bowl, you know? And I just thank God. We were poor. It was just like church mice. There were six kids we were poor so we could get out. But I tell you what, I remember I was a little boy. I had my own little horn, you know? I won't tell you. Because there was an evangelist. He blew up. He had a horn. And I would not get out in the middle. I wanted to be like him. I tell you what, that's the kind of heros you ought to be wanting your kids to have. My friend today, if you don't get them in church, if you don't build up the man of God, if you don't build up authority in your life, it will come back to bite you like you've never seen. Go ahead and teach your children disrespect to pastors, to the president, to police.
The Financial Guys
A highlight from Rising Auto Theft Rates: Urban Consequences and Solutions
"Well, you see how easy this is now. Now you look at how they move money around and how the in your face money laundering folks, this is what this is. This is corruption and fraud. Some of the Bidens are great at the money laundering part. They got 20 shell corporations, but guess who's getting the guess who's going to be controlling the funding to rebuild Ukraine. We pay to destroy it. And guess what? The Hillary Clinton Foundation gets paid the rebuild Welcome right. to the podcast. We are in the same studio today, which is kind of nice. So thanks again for downloading. If you're just listening, if you're watching or watching the clips, uh, thanks for watching as well. And just for a quick mention, so I don't forget, if you haven't downloaded our app yet, I'm noticing we're getting a lot of downloads and the cool thing is when the morning Mike's program is going Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm the, seeing the view count go up and up and up, which is awesome. So I know we're only, you know, we're still in the dozens. I'd like to get into the hundreds and eventually thousands, um, but it's a cool program. If you haven't listened to it, it's a quick 15 minutes to quick by morning, run down three days a week of the top five topics, three minutes each. Do a great job. They do an awesome job when we're, when we fill in the stuff. We screw the whole thing up. Yes. Yeah. We, we blow the whole, the whole, uh, the schedule, but, um, but they do awesome and they're funny. I love it. It's a quick, you know, down and dirty 15 minutes, top five items of the day. And now you get your day started off on the, uh, they, you know, I think on the right foot, they were saying this week, like, Oh, it's so negative all the time, but I think they're hilarious. They take the negative stuff that's going on, but of course the negative stuff isn't the news. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're seeing. I mean, carjackings again, Rochester had another, you know, record night. I mean, it's incredible how that was going on. And so it's amazing is, is like the Democrats just sit around and watch this happen in every city and every city. It's insane. Yeah. I sent you an article earlier this morning about Philadelphia. Let's see. I can find it. It's, uh, not that it's anything out of, you know, anything that we don't know about, but let's see here. Philadelphia swarmed by alleged juvenile. Come on, come on. Juvenile looters targeting the Apple store, Lulu lemon and footlocker. Yeah. So, cause they're starving. They're starving. They just, just need a little piece of ham and some Turkey. They need clothes and food. That's, that's only fair. I mean, they, you know, and once again, I know we've all heard this joke, but footlocker is not missing one pair of working boots. No, no, all the Nike's, all the Nike. Yeah. Well, some of those Nike's, I mean, Oh my God. Crazy. You know, talking about like, you know, thousands of dollars for a pair of, thousands, thousands of dollars. I was talking to my daughter and she said to one, one of her friends has a, as a pair of shoes were $1 ,200. I'll never forget the most expensive pair of shoes I ever bought. We were just starting a business. This was like 30 years ago now. Right. Crazy to think. And I remember somebody told me that maybe my dad was like, you got to have a decent pair of shoes. Right. And so I went up and I bought a pair of Justin and Murphy's. They're like 120 bucks at the time. Yeah. The most money I have ever spent on a pair of shoes. Now boots, I've spent more money on since because boots are more expensive, you know, hunting boots. Well, there's a purpose to them. I still don't spend more money on shoes. Like I'm wearing like Skechers or like $40. Like some of these Nike's $500. You can't tell me you're running faster. It's different when you're going to go out and buy a pair of like waders or something. You're going to use them. First of all, you're going to use them for the next 30 years. Right. And there's a purpose to them, right? Like, okay, they're more expensive, but I can walk through the water with them. Right. But if I bought like, if I had five, 600 hour pairs of shoes, I'd be afraid to leave the house. I wouldn't, I wouldn't get off the carpeting. Well, they're targeting the Apple store here, Glenn, because they'll buy jobs. And that's the only way to get a job is to make sure you've got an Apple iPhone. So it'll be like Chicago. We talked about this the other week with, with, uh, with Mike Speraza, Chicago is now forced to open or, or just talking about opening, you know, a, a government run grocery store in the inner city because they've all that. Well, they're going to, so they're going to, they're going to, the plan is to fight the communism with more kind of communism, right? That's going to work really well. But could you imagine how inefficient, first of all, Walmart's pulled out, Costco's pulled out, all the stores have pulled out because now target, have you heard targets now closing stores across the country? So target is now going through and discussing all the stores across the country, liberal target, liberal target. They put a black lives matter that they ripped down the smash of the window. I thought that'd be some sort of a shield or that we're just going to put up this, uh, this plywood and we're going to spray black lives matter on it. Hashtag hashtag BLM. And we'll be safe as they rip it out and use that same plywood to smash the window with. It's pathetic. There'll be nothing left in these inner cities. The problem is when it starts to spill over into the, into the, Oh yeah. This is, this is where it gets ugly. Well, they want it. That's what they want. That's, that's why people like, uh, the governor of New York, uh, you know, Kathy, the ice queen, Kathy Hochul is, is, you know, they first tried the push for section eight housing in the suburbs because that was only fair. Yeah. Now they couldn't get that through because the people in the suburbs are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now they're busing in illegal immigrants in the middle of the night. And I tell you something, if these Democrats like Mark Poland cars were proud of what they were doing, they would have a welcoming party at noon at noon, high noon. They'd have a press conference welcoming our newest community members off the bus so that the whole community could see these family units that are getting off. You got the husband, the wives, the two kids, you know, the things that we see in our country, right? No, it's not happening. They're bringing them in at two o 'clock in the morning. So nobody sees, they're all, they're all 23 year old males, right? Or 18 to 25 year old males. Some of which are from the Congo. I don't know about the, uh, you know, the, some of the social norms in the Congo, but I'm just thinking that maybe they're a little bit different than the Western world. I don't know. I'm just thinking maybe not. Maybe they're exactly like us. I don't know. But they're exactly like us. Why would they want to come here? Why are they aspiring to come here? I don't know. Anyway, it's a fentanyl fentanyl up again, by the way, there was another report. I think it was on a Fox news. Well, good for the Republicans. I mean, at least part of them, I should say good for the five or six Republicans that are the extreme right wing, according to the media, that's holding this garbage up. No, shut the government down, shut it down, shut it down until there's no more money. Take the money, go into Ukraine and send it to Texas, which they did right to the border, which they didn't do last time. Right. Kept it open. That's what do you need? What do you need? We're out of control. The founding fathers gave the power of the purse to Congress and the, and the Pentagon, the Pentagon goes, yeah, you know what? We're just going to exempt Ukraine funding from the budget. So ha ha. We just went over 33 trillion. If you go online and look at the clock, it's moving fast, right? So we're on our way to 34 or 35. Can you even see the numbers anymore? They just blur blur now. So, so fast. Oh no. And, and good news, by the way, we're refinancing this debt at 5 % now, not at 1 % or zero like we were doing. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It'd be great. Yeah. The fence talk about keeping rates higher for longer. I don't know. They're not going to be able to do that. They'll be cutting interest rates by next year. Mark by where? And the number one reason I say that is because when you talk to every economist, I say, that's not going to happen. And they are typically wrong. So if you take the, it's like saying betting against the casino, it's like saying, you know what? I don't think MGM is going to make money in the sporting books next year. Ma, they're going to figure out a way to make money. They'll rechange the lines, right? Well, you, all you need to do is look at it and get a bunch of economists in a room and ask them where they think the market's going to be and then do just the opposite and you would be way better. Yeah. Pretty much that's usually the way to go. No doubt about it. So the, the, the, the Pelosi, we were talking earlier about the Pelosi stock trader. Yeah. You can follow online. Now, some of these folks, we did the game show game last week. We talked about the, uh, the net worth. I picked the poor ones too. They were like 23, 21, you know, $20 million. Some of these folks are amazing. I mean, really just, you know, the wizards of smart on some of these are just really, timing is impeccable up here. This is somebody who is selling some software that I'll track it, which you can, you, you've pointed out, you can get it for free online, but, but the, the numbers are really astonishing. This Democrat Senator sold her Aspen vacation home for $25 million. That was just after she sold her Lake Tahoe vacation house for $36 million. Well, by the way, why, why do they own these big $25, $36 million homes? Well, a big, big part of it is because the taxation of it, right? So a Feinstein who's telling you your ordinary income tax rates are too low. She's shifting that to a capital asset, which is going to create a capital gain in the future or no gain. Or no gain. I mean, they're 10, 10 31. This is why when Donald Trump looked at Hillary Clinton right in the eye and said, you will not get rid of the carry interest deduction and you know it because all of your, I use it, of course, all of her bigger donors donate money to Hillary Clinton. And this is exactly the truth, right? They will never get rid of some of these things. Like they talked about, we're going to get rid of the 10 31 exchanges. Yaha. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. So the big developer strokes a giant check to the, to the Democrats off the table. Let's listen to her success though. Amazing. A Senator sold her Aspen vacation home for $25 million just after she sold her Lake Tahoe vacation house for $36 million. Only two years earlier, Diane Feinstein has been a member of the political scene for 32 years and her salary is only $130 ,000 per 130 grand a year. Now it's more now. That's a little bit dated, but it's up, it's up to probably 180 now. But, but listen to this. First of all, if it was up to 580, you're not buying $23 million homes, $36 million homes. No, no, we're going to put in multiple homes. We're going to, we're going to put the Paul Pelosi onto our research committee. You make a million dollars a year. First of all, most of, most business owners that make that kind of money, they didn't make it throughout their whole life, right? They didn't start making a million dollars at 20 years old. They started making a million dollars at 50 years old and it took 30 years to get to that point. Right? So my point is, you're not at a million dollars a year at age 50. If you did it the right way, the hard way, and you did it yourself, you're still not affording a $23 million home, right? Multiple ones. Yeah. Multiple, multiple. Right. Those aren't even her primary residence. Those are her vacation homes. She lives in, she lives in California. Listen to this though. And it's, it's all of them. It's all of them now. This is a, this is from Nancy Pelosi, stock trader. Uh, this is a tweet, uh, a Twitter feed. You can follow Pelosi tracker is what it's supposed to track or underline or something like that. You'll find it. Anyway, uh, three weeks ago, sitting politician bet against the U S economy so far. He's been right. Tom Carper bought $45 ,000 of PSQ and inverse ETF on the tech sector on eight 23, August 23rd. Since then he's plus 3 % while the market is negative 4%. Go figure. Wow. Go figure. Man, these guys are so good. Yeah. And they're not by, they're, I mean, these are, that's some pretty technical strategy. You started getting into options strategies and stuff. I mean, yeah. Yeah. These guys have become very, very slick. It's not just about buying a, you see, it used to be, okay, I'm going to buy X, Y, Z. Then I'm going to vote for or against something. You know, I'm going to short the stock and then I'm going to vote against them for both that, that, that. So the stock goes down or I'm going to vote for something, knowing that it will benefit the company. The stock will go up and in a sense front running. No, they're, they're in the options strategies now. They're in the market. Yeah. They're doing butterfly spreads. Yeah. Crazy stuff going. They're very sophisticated. They shouldn't be allowed to two things. When you go into Congress, I, you know, I would love to have a Congress person run on or present around the following platform, right? Number one, term limits, term limits, top of the list. Number two, though, while you're in Congress for the eight years, or wherever we allow you to serve 10 years, 12 years, whatever it is, you could not invest in a stock market at all. All your investments are frozen or your choices, a model, some kind of a model liquidated go to cash, or you could buy the fidelity balance to counter. You could buy the, you could buy the T -rope price, you know, target retire, whatever, you know, or you go to goes into a blind something or other where you have no idea. Right. It just goes into what you picked a one through five tolerance for risk and somebody else invest. Maybe it's just broad indexing. Maybe that's it. Right. Something that doesn't allow this kind of garbage to go on where, you know, they buy, you know, Tesla stock and then approve a huge, you know, oh, we're going to, guess what? We're going to build a, you know, for government funded battery stations all the country. Of course, Elon comes out and goes, we already got those, you idiots. I did that like four years ago, you morons. Amazing what Elon can do and what the, what the government can. Going back to target for just a second, not to digress, but I found WGRZ, thankfully came up with a list of the, uh, the target stores that will be closing, Mike, the full list of locations all in, all in Republican run. You'll be shocked. Yeah. Yeah. Right in the, uh, the thriving, the, uh, you know, thriving, the Minneapolis, uh, location, the retailer said the decision, the close was really difficult. I wonder if that was after half. That was the one they put the BLM on. Yeah. Oh, that was the one they put the sign on that said, please don't burn our store down. We love you. I hashtag BLM lit it on fire. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Uh, let's see. I'm shocked though. I wouldn't, I'm surprised you wouldn't stay. I mean, you know, like just collecting, you love them. You love, you support them. This is what you supported. Remember you, you, you raised money, you gave money. Yeah. And guess what they did with that money. They agitators hired to whip up people in the community to smash and burn down your store. You idiots. So there you go. There you go. Nice, nice work. What else do you think, Mike? Uh, New York city's East Harlem neighborhood. That's going to be one that's goes down. I wonder why. Chicago, San Francisco for sure. San Fran. Yeah. San Fran. Uh, by the way, before I forget San Fran, Democrat San Francisco mayor, announces plan to require drug testing, which is good in an effort to, if you're going to receive homeless benefits. Right. But the funny thing was in this same passage, they're going to Texas to try to recruit police officers. The funny thing is is that the people they sent from San Francisco to try to recruit people. They didn't come back. They defected like North Koreans. Some of them got jobs. They get over the wall. They come out, they get over the wall. It was hilarious. No, they didn't go back. Well, the other five stores, Mike, three in Portland, Oregon and two in Seattle, five, three in Portland. They're pulling out of Portland together. All of these inner cities folks will be food deserts. You're going to hear that term. It'll be business deserts. It'll be nothing. Well, business deserts, nothing left, but there'll be, but target, don't forget target. Does target sell food? Yeah. Well, yeah. They sell food. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Well, I don't go on target. So Walmart I know does Costco for sure. Costco is a food store. I don't think target is as big as Walmart as far as like fresh fruit, but definitely frozen food, all that kind of stuff. You know, aisles of pop and water and chips and right, right, right. And all that kind of stuff. But you can definitely frozen food. You can buy bulk frozen food there. So, so there's going to be food deserts, all over the place, business deserts, whatever you want to call them. You know, it's amazing because you know, the, there's no policing. And the sad thing is that is the problem. It's not, there's no policing. I shouldn't say that. Excuse me. No, you're policing your asses off. I get it. There's no ability. There's no prosecution. There's no bill. You guys are arresting people, putting them in and they go right back on the street. They're getting, they're getting appearance tickets. It's a joke. Your point is no, there is no policing anymore because of the system, the Democrats put together where the police officers aren't going to bother. If you're a police officer and you know that somebody is going to be this, this carjacking or whatever is robbery. And you know that there's a potential, you're going to get an altercation where you're in New York state. There's two police officers that have been brought up on charges recently with almost a hundred percent chance that if you do catch that person, that person will be right back. Yeah. A hundred percent. Why would you bother? Why would you bother? You're not going to put your life in line. No way. You want to go home to see your wife and kids too, and your mother or your husband or whatever. You want to be able to spend your Christmas with your family. Why would you do that? And they know that, right? The Democrats know that. This is, you can't be this stupid. I mean, who allows these people to go right back on the streets and say, this is a good idea without correcting this right away. You can say, okay, bail reform. Our intentions were one thing, but when you look at the fact that in New York state, we are now breaking records in towns like Rochester and Buffalo for the most amount of vehicles being stolen. We can say, okay, look at bail reform, put it in place. It clearly did not work. It's been a total disaster. These towns have turned to shit. We absolutely need to go back in the other direction. They're not doing that. They don't care. They want to, and they're doubling down, tripling down on it, tripling down. We invited this liberal on, you actually were on the show with him and he said, things are actually safer since bail reform. That's what his argument was. His argument was, and by the way, his argument was if we have even less police officers, cities like Buffalo will get safer. Well the thought was less police officers, less arrests. Less arrests means less crime. Dude, you got the whole thing backwards, bro. And not only that, but now we know that, right? Now we know, now you can, I mean, literally auto thefts are up 360 % in Rochester. They're not up 3%. You can say, well, you know, in Buffalo and we're in second place. And they can't play, they can't play in COVID. They're trying to like, well, it was a lockdown. People were at pent up, whatever. Remember that was the, that was the reason for the rioting and the ballooning and burning like, well, people had a lot of pent up. We probably should have locked them down. That was a little bit of the reason for the increase in suicides. You guys, you guys increased suicides because you locked kids in their homes, but it wasn't the reason that they went and decided to steal Nike sneakers from a footlocker. So check this out. Speaking of COVID, this is huge. This is, I don't know if you saw this or not, but this is absolutely ginormously huge. Dr. Fauci was smuggled into CIA headquarters without a record of entry where he participated in the analysis to influence the agency's COVID -19 investigation according to the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. Did he need to do much with these left -wing CIA agents? Probably not. No, no, no. That's what they're smuggling him in for. Well they smuggled him in because they didn't want anybody to know that he was part of the PSYOP operation, which was hydroxychloric. By the way, the I think it was a Mayo clinic and some other hospitals now have come out as well as the CDC and said hydroxychloroquine, yes, indeed is an effective treatment for COVID. Oh, by the way, ivermectin also an effective treatment. The CDC now approving that. Now mind you, we're going to keep in mind that if there was any other treatments that couldn't get the emergency use authorization for these vaccines that clearly don't work. Amazingly, I'm still seeing people online go signing off my sixth booster on our way for the sixth shot, proud to get our sixth shot. How about how about one the other day, local left -wing nut job got her sixth booster shot, six shot and she still got COVID and then she said, well, I was so good hiding and it got all my shots and then I went to a concert and I got it at this concert. Well, first of all, you don't know that, but second of all, if you have six shots and you six shots and you still got COVID and you actually think that was a good idea, you don't need a vaccination. You need a mental, you need a mental check. I tell you, I know people during the during the COVID, the height of the COVID that were older, some of our clients actually that were prescribed by a doctor a hydroxy quirk when they were taking it once a week as a as a preventative measure. Yeah. And they, to this day have never had COVID. Yeah. And it's, it's, I mean, so it, but the sad thing is again, you know, we couldn't, it's all about the money now. And that's, you know, when people talk about the evils of capitalism, you're seeing some of that. Now, capitalism is the best thing on the planet, right? As far as, you know, lifting the masses out of poverty and creating amazing amounts of wealth. But the problem is this isn't, this isn't capitalism. What's going on. This is cronyism is what's going on. It is, Hey, look at, I will give you these government dollars. You're going to get this patent. You're going to get this. Unholy marriage between business and government. Mark my word. We were talking about Feinstein selling 25, $30 million homes. This Fauci will be on the board of Pfizer. He'll be on the board of Moderna. He's going to get shares of those companies. He will be blessed with with with millions and millions of dollars. His family watch and see, we'll be talking if we're, if you and I are fortunate enough to be around 20, 30 years from now, we'll be talking about the Fauci trust and watch and monitor that trust and see how big that family trust. Well, you see how easy this is now. You look at how they move money around and how the in your face money laundering folks. This is what this is. This is corruption and fraud. Some of the Bidens are great at the money laundering part. They got 20 shell corporation, but guess who's getting the, guess who's going to be controlling the funding to rebuild Ukraine. We pay to destroy it. And guess what? The Hillary Clinton foundation gets paid to rebuild it. Right. And guess who's going to get the contracts to rebuild. Oh, that'll be probably one of the Biden family members or somebody else's politically connected. Right. Remember it was, it was a Joe Biden's brother who got the contract, the multi -billion dollar contract to rebuild Iraq. No building experience, never been a contractor, right? No idea. Right. This is why these projects cost 500 times what they're supposed to cost. This is why when money comes into Buffalo, for example, $25 million to build homes, five get built. And you were, wait a minute, five, are these $5 million homes in the East side? Each of those homes would have been built for a quarter million dollars or less. And yet where did the rest of the money go? And the, the answer is never, we don't know. We don't know. We can't account for it. Or we'd have no idea. Or I mean, how many times have we've seen that in so many places that whether right down the local level or God forbid at the federal level between, you know, Iraq and others. I was telling you last week on the radio, I was reading an article about the grants that were coming into the city of Buffalo to plant trees. And I thought, okay, wow, like this could be sweet. Okay. You know, like I'm a big tree guy. I love trees. I plant trees every year. I do think, okay, that's one way to, first of all, I think it's one way to make a community look great. When you, when you drive around, let's say North Buffalo, all the streets are all tree. They look beautiful. You drive around the East side, it looks like shit, right? So, okay. You're going to take some of my tax money and you're going to directly plant trees. Okay. It's a win for the environment. It looks nice. It's going to bring things together. I'm like, well, where's the catch? This is a government agency. Where are they going to screw it up? You read through and you find out that they're paying $1 ,000 a tree. Now you and I both know that if they're saying it's $1 ,000 a tree, by the time it's done, it'll be two to $3 ,000 a tree. Now you, you're talking about $13 million worth of trees. You and I just planted trees. Every year we plant a few trees around our office, you know, three, four in the spring, three, four in the fall, just so they can start to grow and work their way in. And then, you know, plant more. We pay $250 a tree, plant it. Right.
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.
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"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Right. So, yeah, we have a little break right there and we're going to get into the rest of the episodes. The next category that we will be looking at is going to be our physical. That's my favorite category. How do we invest in this physicality? I think, you know, it's her favorite. She got to go, please, y'all. Right after spirituality will be physical for me. Physical. Actually, I wouldn't say physical, but anyways, I might be lying and I will say knowledge. Then I might say finances. I don't know. But I can be thinking about my atri's. Right. I feel like you're very much like knowledge inclined and also like finances right now. Right. So, I mean, you're also very much like you. Please, please don't play with her. Her looks. Okay. Period. But like, yeah, like you saying that's your next favorite. Okay. Okay. That's a new one. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking about it. But then, you know, like, you know, I actually cannot rank these categories. Right. I think I like all of them. I know just kind of in their place. Yeah. Yeah. But I do like talking about physicality as well. So it probably that's what I was trying to show. So, yeah, when it comes to physicality for me, I took up lattice this week. So I've been going in for Pilates since Monday and y'all. They drained me. That's what she's saying. It drained her. I know I didn't want to go today. I didn't want to do it today. I was like, can I sleep in? Can I like what? I'm so sore as I'm speaking to you. But yes, I did that. And the reason why I just didn't want to do Pilates today was because I'm also going to the gym. Like, what am I doing to myself? Gym and Pilates together. You trying to get that body right. Okay. I see. But the reason why is and then I'm going to read Genesis so that we can know. So the reason why is God first calls humanity to cultivate and care for his creation. In Genesis, chapter one, verse twenty eight. So when we're told that rescue words of the earth, we're supposed to take care of everything in the earth and your body. Unfortunately, fortunately, it's part of the earth. So you're supposed to be a good steward of your body. So, yes, that's why I started to move more by adding Pilates to the gym. But last year I was doing yoga. So for those who don't want to do Pilates, you could do yoga too. Yoga and Pilates are quite similar in my opinion. I was going to ask, like, are they different? They are quite similar in my opinion. Same movement, but I don't really know the details. I might offend the yoga community and the Pilates community if I say it's the same brand different packaging. But please don't. Yes, I'm not going to because I really I haven't done my research, so I wouldn't even know like the differences. But they are very, very similar in my opinion. So for those who don't want to do like Pilates, you could do yoga. I feel like yoga has more intricate moves than Pilates. But yeah. So for those who don't want to do Pilates, you could do yoga. Also eating healthy, like be mindful of what I'm mindful of what I'm putting in my body. I cut out soda entirely. It's been years, though, with the soda like cutting out thing. So yeah, I cut out soda and I started drinking more of coconut water. So instead of like taking orange juice and fruit juice, I started taking coconut water and kombucha. So, yeah, just mindful of what I put in my body and moving more. And then also for the ladies, I know you people are like so gorgeous, like everyone is gorgeous. You could rock eyelashes and lip gloss and kill it out there and turn heads. But there are events and functions that lip gloss and eyelashes just wouldn't cut it. Do your makeup, please. Do your makeup look good. If you want to do the five minute makeup thing, go ahead. Just apply a little bit of blush, apply a little bit of lip gloss, lipstick to your face and foundation. And trust me, you're going to elevate your physical look more. Like, yes, you are killing it with the eyelashes and lip gloss, but you could do more. Do you know, like I feel like you could push yourself more. That's what I think. So, yeah. And then also dress your body, dress how you physically look. Like for me, I was top heavy, but now I'm not top heavy anymore. Hallelujah for the Lord. Amen. I was top heavy and I hated that I was top heavy. So I recomposed my body. I went to the gym and I reduced my upper body and made it proportional in my eyes. So I'm proportional in my eyes. People would say that, like, you were OK, you know, there was nothing wrong with you. That's your opinion. But I love the way I look now. Like, I feel like I'm proportional now. So, yes, you could go to the gym and change how you look. I did it. And I'm telling you that it's possible. Like, if you know, you have big boobs like how I had big boobs and I didn't like how my boobs look in my clothes. I was I lost weight and then I gained the weight back in the places I wanted to see the weight gain. So, yeah, if you do that and then guess how to dress appropriately for your body. So if you are top heavy and you don't want to do the whole gym thing, like lose weight, you like your top to be heavy. Then, like I know most people who are like top heavy don't like to call attention to our like our boobs area. So dress so that you reduce your attention to your boob area. Like look into the research. I don't want to go too much into it, but I could do the research and see how to dress. So your clothes could flatter you more on your body. Yeah, period. She said it. She said it all. Like, yeah, absolutely. I think for me, I've definitely been incorporating most of what you said, Tracy. So I don't do Pilates, I might say, but I go to the gym. It feels so good just being able to say I go to the gym, you know, because earlier this year I started and then, well, I stopped. I just got just tired and lazy or whatever it was. I just stopped. But then guess what, guys? I started again this week. Yes, girl. This week has been our transformative week. Tracy started Pilates. Joanna started the gym. OK, period. So, yeah, I started going to the gym and I love how it makes me feel. Like when I get back, I'm very active and my body just loves it when I, you know, move around, do a little bit of weightlifting and all of that good stuff. So, yes, gym or just, you know, make sure you're getting some physical activity. That's the ultimate goal. Move your body and just be active and healthy, you know, because I don't know who said it, but this is the time when you can. So if you do not take advantage of it, when you're like 40 and 50 and your muscles and your bones just do not want to cooperate, you're not going to be able to appreciate the flexibility and the option of just being able to move your body freely when you could. So I hope that makes sense. But yeah. And looks, yes, as she said, please just dress for your body type. Like me, I'm also how they call it, down heavy. Well, I'm pear shaped. That's what they call it. Right. So I also just dress and cut into my body. So it all boils down to research and just knowing your body type and knowing how to dress to flatter your body period. All right. The last thing I'm going to add is your smell. That is something that's always on my heart. I love perfumes. I love smelling good. My favorite compliment is, oh my goodness, you smell good. What are you wearing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please. Body odor, body odor. B.O., at this time, you are smelling. It's impossible. It's impossible, please. You can't be walking around just smelling any type of way. You've got to smell good. You've got to turn heads just by your smell. You know what I'm saying? So please invest, invest in good smelling perfume. You know, everybody has a different scent profile. So what you like may not be what I necessarily like. But hey, once you smell good, that's it. All right. So please invest in good perfume. Also, they're very affordable options that smell really good. So just do your research. Find them. You don't have to break a bank to smell good. Just make sure you're smelling good. OK. And check out Vanilla Bean on Instagram if you need some inspo. We're going to leave it down in the description box. So that is for our physical section. And finally, finally. Oh, my God. Finally, this week's episode is literally information heavy. Yeah. And I'm even drained talking about it. So I know how like it's information dense, but trust is trust us on this one. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. So our final category is going to be our emotional category, how we invest in ourselves emotionally. And I'm going to hand the mic over to my sister. So when it comes to emotional for me, I'm naturally a nonchalant person. So it takes a lot to get me over the edge. And also, I really did take time to work on my emotions. As I said, I'm just a naturally nonchalant person, so I really don't get tip over the edge as much. And then I started like reading the Bible more and just like filling myself up with the Holy Spirit. And so the more I filled myself out with the Holy Spirit, the more I started to see the fruits of the Holy Spirit be manifest in my life. So being disciplined and then being of good temper, being kind, all of that started just like manifesting as I started to like soak in the word more. So when it comes to like emotion, unfortunately, I really don't have like really, really great information. The best information and the only information I have is fill yourself up more with the Holy Spirit. And you will be able to discern and know who you should allow into your space. Who you should allow into your space, who is joining you emotionally, who is triggering you, how to get rid of your triggers, and how to just like compose yourself out in like public, in your private, in whatever it is. Just for me, that was that's my trick. That's literally it. I spent more of my time with the Holy Spirit and I started to see the fruits be manifested in my life. Amen, sister. Amen. Yeah. So emotionally, I think for me, the biggest thing has been self-awareness and just taking time to like understand and acknowledge my emotions. So, you know, taking time to understand, acknowledge and being able to communicate that. So say I'm agitated, I'm frustrated, I am anxious, I am elated, I am ecstatic, like all of those different things. They're expressed differently. And so being able to identify and acknowledge and harness whatever emotion you are feeling at that time and better manage it has been very helpful for me. Another thing that I know people do, I tried it, but I didn't really get far with it, is journaling. So you can journal how you feel and it can help you keep track of your emotional patterns. And if there are things that maybe you want to work on or want to improve on, that's a great way to kind of have a visual of your emotional patterns and do the necessary work that you need to. And yeah, also like setting boundaries is really important. You know, protecting yourself, protecting your mental space, protecting just. Boundaries are meant to protect you. Right. So being able to say no when you have to without feeling like you're offending someone or you feel obliged to do whatever it is they're saying. But yeah, just setting boundaries, healthy boundaries is also a good thing. And finally, you can have like emotional goals. Right. Like earlier this year, I said I want to be I wanted to be more patient because I realized I was getting very agitated easily. And I wanted to work more on just being patient and managing like anger and stuff like that. So, yeah. And ultimately, as she said, all of these things you can do when you are better sensitive to the Holy Spirit and submit it to him, because he can help you manage all of these things that you are experiencing and going through. And yeah, your emotions, submitting it to him and just allowing him to work on you so that, you know, in the end, his fruits can be born in you. Is that the word born? Yeah. Can be born in you. And yeah. And then it will all be great. So. Oh, my goodness. Right. You have finally come to the end. Wow. It's been a good one. It's been an informative one. And honestly, if you are to apply all these things that we've said, I know I can attest to it. It's work for me. It's work for Joanna. That is going to make you feel happier. And back to the analogy, more polished and more shiny. You will feel good. Trust me, you will feel good in yourself. And all of the categories go right under the spirituality category. If you have spirituality in check, you have spirituality logged. You'll be able to be self-disciplined to work on yourself physically by going to the gym and everything. You'll be self-disciplined just by being self-disciplined by praying when you're supposed to pray. By reading your Bible, when you're supposed to read your Bible, you are working on self-discipline. You can carry that into each and every single category, especially when you're expanding your finances and you have to be self-disciplined and do the work that you're supposed to do. You are carrying that self-discipline that you learned from your spirituality into your finances. So it is not don't think about it like they're separated categories. Think about it like it's intersectionality. So everything is just like linked together. And finally, finally, finally, this is the last I want to leave everyone with. If you know you're a cult, you know you're a cult in your heart of hearts. You're a cult to be in a relationship. Think about it this way. Imagine the person you want to be with. If the person you want to be with has all these great qualities. He's smart. He's a hard worker. He is a good communicator. He is physically good looking. If you think about your partner and your partner fits in that category. Right. Leave the person in the future and then you'll work on your present self so that when it is time for your future to meet with your present self, the present self will be in the right place, the right position to receive the future. And I hope this is making sense. So leave your partner when I say leave your partner. Like, OK, you have the idea of who your partner is, how your partner is supposed to look, how your partner is supposed to be presented. Yada, yada, yada. For the men, you know how a woman is supposed to look. For the women, you know how your dream man is supposed to look. Leave that person in the future and work on yourself. Right. So you are what you attract. If you want the good looking man, you want this smart man. You want the woman who has all the skills in the world. Develop yourself. Have those skills. Be a good communicator. Be smart. Develop those skills and then meet your partner in the future with everything you have. So basically it's going to happen. It's going to work out. If you are called to be in a relationship, it's going to happen. The person that you are yearning for is going to be there. He's already there. She's already there. They are waiting for you. Right. Just work on yourself. Focus on yourself. Forget pursuing the person and just keep working on yourself till you get the person will come and meet you. And you will also meet that person. Physically is all I'm saying. Just break down the wall, the center, the man and focus on yourselves. Please. A hundred percent, Tracy. I couldn't agree more with everything that you said. And I don't even have anything else to add. You literally hit the nail on the head. So, yeah, just focus on your preparatory stage and your self discovery and everything else will work out for you good. It will. It always works out. It always does. Yeah. All right, guys, it was absolutely amazing having this conversation with you. Well, I hope this episode was insightful and helpful for somebody out there. And you learned a thing or two that you're hopefully going to implement in your life and see the results that you're looking for. So we enjoy talking to you and we will love to hear from you. So be sure to interact with us on our social media platforms, on Twitter at Club 31 pod, Instagram at Club 31 pod and even leave a review, like and share our podcast through all the streaming platforms, Apple podcast and Spotify. Also, I would love to know how you people are implementing each of these things that you've learned, the categories, whatever it is. I also want to know the ways it means you decide to go and tackle these things. So, like, for those of you that aren't going to do the categories or for those of you that are doing categories, what categories are you doing? Like, I'm actually interested. I'm curious to know, like, I want to know the different ways it means you're going to, like, tackle it. What skills are you picking up? What are you doing? Give me the little bestie. Oh, yeah. We would love to learn from you as well. So share with us. Share your knowledge as well with us. So, yeah, it's been a good time, Tracy. What do you think? It has. It has been a great time. I know this information is dense, but it has worked. It really has worked for me. And that's why I'm sharing it with y'all. This is the secret, yo. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us in this episode. And we would catch y'all on the flip side next week. Yes, we would. And as always, love you.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"When it comes to my finances, I started diversifying the ways and means of earning my money. So I know of active income. That's what a lot of people are familiar with. And then also passive income. And I zeroed in on the passive income stream this period, this season. And then I have like multiple businesses now that are a source of income to me. So, yeah, I mean, my entrepreneur bag, you know, getting yours, talking to myself, too. It is not easy to be your entrepreneur bag. It's a little hard work. But, yeah. And then also because of my multiple ways of earning money, I have looked up like investing, trying to understand the lingo of money. Literally, it's what I've been doing, how to repurpose the money, put it into the business, all of that. Joyner has said it all when it comes to investing, because I don't want to go too much into investing. But, yeah, I'm learning about investing as well. Oh, OK, OK, OK. I feel like we've been going and going and going and going. But maybe we should take a little break. And I was thinking I heard something. So a girl read a book in a movie that I watched. She read a book. And in the book it said, would you rather have something that you love and lose it or would you rather not have it at all? What do you think? I'd rather have something I love and lose it than not have it. OK, tell us more. Tell us more. I feel like everything can be a lesson. So it's always going to be for the betterment of me. So not having it at all, I get to miss out on the lesson. So I do not know what it is. Maybe I was being taught how to appreciate stuff. So I get to miss out on the appreciation lesson. I don't know what it means to appreciate something. But when I have it and I lose it, then I get the lesson example, the lesson being appreciation. I learned that, OK, if you have something, you can fumble, you can lose it. And so the next time I'm going to get something good, I'm going to hold on to it for as long as I can, because I know the feeling of not having, of having and then losing. So I'm going to hold on to it as long as I can for the next time. So, yeah, it's literally just me looking at it like, oh, everything is a lesson. So I'd rather have it and lose it and learn the lesson than like miss out on the lesson entirely. Wow. Wow. Words of wisdom from Tracy, y'all. There we go. I love that. Like, I feel like for me, I, I absolutely agree with you. I also thought to myself, I'd rather have it and lose it. And it's kind of tight with what you said. But I was thinking of it from the point of like experiences, right? Like we live life and then we experience different things, experience good things, we experience bad things. So, I mean, a lot of times we don't like to experience the bad things, but as you rightly said, you know, there are lessons to be learned there. But also, like, if it's something that I love, it's probably, I'm probably having like a good experience from it. And even though I'm going to lose it, I'm probably going to be pained about it. I still got the experience of love or whatever, like great, you know, memories that we probably made. Right. So I'd rather have it and have something that, you know, maybe I can think about. Oh, you know what? I've done that. I've experienced that and I know how it felt. And so like, you know, if I'm probably in another situation where it's not giving what it was going to give, I know what I kind of am looking for. You know? Yeah. But basically, like, I would love the experience with something that I love than to not experience it at all. Like love is a beautiful thing. I want to experience it. So, yeah.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"It's true. It's true. That's what she said. Bro, what do you mean? I was like, hey, Charlie. Right. But I did all that because as I said, I saw the hard work and I didn't want to dampen his spirit. I just wanted her to continue with it. Like I wanted her to push herself. I wanted her to make more pie. And honestly, now if you have Joanna's pie, I doubt you would want to have anybody else's pie. Her pie is literally so good. I'm not, I'm not, she's laughing like this girl is doing her thing. I'm not doing my thing. She makes really, really great pie. I've been telling her to like sell her pie. And that's another story for another day. But yeah, she makes really great pies. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you. Thank you. But yes, I'm glad that is a skill I picked up, you know, with the help and encouragement and positive words from my friend, my support. And I'm glad because yes, I do. I, if I can say so myself, I think I do. I make decent pies. I enjoy them when I make them. Another thing that I'd say I picked up as a skill. Well, these two, let me not lie, I didn't pick it up yet. I'm still in the process. I really, really wanted to learn how to play the piano. And so I got myself a keyboard. And in the beginning of the year I feel like I had a lot more time and I was learning. I did learn something. I put it to practice a couple times. However, I haven't really had time. Lately, I've been very swamped. So I haven't put into practice all that I learned. It's probably gone, but you know, I'm still trying to get to it so I can play it one day, you know, play the song of my dreams. And the last thing is language, right? I also told Tracy, hey, I want to learn Spanish. And she's supposed to hold me accountable. We'll let you know how that goes. But yeah, that's all I'm going to say. All right. The thing with Joanna and I's knowledge investment is that it's kind of similar, but for like different reasons. So she started off by, she didn't start off, but like it was part of her point, reading. I have always been an avid reader from when I can remember. My mom would buy me the junior graphic newspaper and I hope it's still running. I hope so too. Oh my gosh. It was low key good though. Like I like how they put the song lyrics at the back. Everybody will be like looking at what song is for this week. I know people used to buy it just for the songs. I used to buy it for the short stories and then ask Antibody. Yes, yes. Was that it? Antibody? Yeah, ask Antibody. That is so funny. I remember there was some cool stuff there though. Not that I would read it, but we used to discuss it. If it was some crazy story, we'll talk about it. Oh yeah, it was a really great production. It was really, really great. And it used to come out every Wednesday. My mommy would literally buy it for me. So every Wednesday night when she picks me up, the graphic is sitting on the chair in the car and then I grab it and I'm like, thank you mom. And then I like read it. She also used to buy books for me. I had a lot of Enid Blyton books. And when I grew out of my Enid Blyton phase, she started buying me books about like assassins. I used to read everything. Yo, I want to tell you guys everything about assassinations, about murder mysteries. I was reading everything. I will pick up a package and I'll read the package. When I'm eating dinner and there is like medicine bottle on the dining table, I'm going to pick up the medicine bottle and read the package. That was how much I used to read Enid everything. But unfortunately, when I got into my course load, I'm also a scientist. So when I got into the world of science, I feel like I needed to devote a lot of my time into science. So I stopped reading for leisure and I started reading for academic. And I had this awakening when I was talking to someone, one of my friends, and the person asked me, what do you like to do as a hobby? Now, I could have learned that I like to watch movies. I don't like to watch movies. I'm not a movie person. That's people's hobby. Yeah, people like to watch movies. I mean, like I enjoy watching movies. Would I say that's my hobby? Yeah, when you're bored, you watch a movie like for leisure. All right. So the person asked me, I said, that's funny because growing up, I had two hobbies that I could literally spit out every single time, reading and swimming. And now that I'm an adult, I don't either. I do not read and I do not swim. So I said, hey, I have to get back to it. I have to get back to reading for leisure. I can find time. I really could find time because I'm not going to lie and say I'm devoted to science entirely, like 24-7. I'm not devoted to science 24-7. I knew I could squeeze in like reading. So I got back to reading through Chimamanda Americana. That's such a great read. If you've not read it, please do. That's right. That was the first book I picked up when I started reading again. And I soon I fell in love with Chimamanda and then I started reading more Chimamanda. I started reading Toni Morrison and Alvarez and the list goes on and on and on. But yeah, to invest in my knowledge, I started reading again. Then I picked up Hausa this year. So the thing with Hausa is I had heard this girl speaking Hausa a couple of years back. And I remember when I heard her speaking Hausa, I told you that this language is so romantic to me. Like, I love, it sounded so pleasurable to me. I wanted to learn the language. And she was a girl. Like, why are you going to learn like Hausa? Like, what's the correlation? And it's fun because, yeah, it was a correlation. I speak French, but then I speak French. I started learning. Well, I picked up French because, first of all, it was mandatory in Ghanaian schools to learn French. And then I just I had the skill and I polished the skill and I kept it. So, yeah. But then Hausa, like, what's the need for Hausa? Especially I don't speak, I don't speak three at all. Right. Everybody is like, why are you learning Hausa? I don't know. I just like the language. I heard a girl speak it that day and I was blown away and I enjoyed it. I was pleasantly pleased with her speaking Hausa and I wanted to pick it up. So I started this year. I started this year because I heard it a ton this year as well. And it just reminded me to the first time I heard the girls speak it. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to learn how to speak Hausa. So I started learning how to speak Hausa and I've been disturbing Joanna with that since. You know, even like she has like, hey, mommy, relax. Yeah, I'm sitting in my corner. Everybody needs to learn it around me. So like, yeah, I picked up Hausa and I'm yet to pick up Spanish, but I'm going to start speaking Spanish or learning Spanish as well. Because, again, the community I live in. So if you notice, a lot of things that I pick up for, like my knowledge are influenced by things that are around me. So the community I live in currently is predominantly Spanish speaking. And I had this lady come up to me. She asked me for like directions to her house. And I was like, girl, I don't know what you're saying. And I realized I needed to pick up Spanish just to understand what she's saying. So, yeah. And then I'm hoping to learn how to bake a cake. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. I'm putting everything in place so that by the end of the year, I'll be able to know how to bake a cake. And we're going to hold you accountable for that. You wouldn't make that cake. Please do. I'm actually working towards learning how to bake a cake. But yes, I have. So basically when it comes to knowledge, I like to do a little hands on stuff. I want to learn how to do pottery. I want to learn how to arrow climb. I want to learn how to bake a cake. And then I started like Coursera. So I started taking courses of Coursera for like just experience and just learning when it comes to certain things. So that's with regards to my path, my trajectory, my educational path and educational trajectory, like how to like be an entrepreneur, all of that. I just take it from Coursera. So, yeah, that's how I invest in myself when it comes to knowledge. Reading and learning languages, picking up skills. Just yeah. That's just to get. That is amazing. Thank you. Thank you. The next category we're going to be tackling is finances. That's pretty exciting to me. Yeah. Yeah. And as usual, I'm going to go. So for finances, the one thing that I am doing to invest in myself financially is learning about investment. So this year I was like, you know what, like, what is this whole thing about investments and S &P 500 and Roth IRA? You know, all of that, all of that. And like when I would go on my TikTok, I would see a lot of the girls in. You shouldn't be sleeping on investment and all these like, you know, great things that they have benefited from investing their money. Right. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to look into it. I'm going to expand my knowledge on this whole thing called investment. And so far, so good. I've actually learned stuff and I'm still learning, to be fair, how to make wealth. You know, and I am also in the process of implementing what I learned. So that is one of the biggest things that I'm doing currently to invest in myself. Also in learning about how to manage your money. Right. Budgeting and saving and, you know, it's kind of related to the first one, but just how to be a good steward of money is another thing that I have been personally learning. So, yeah, one day we're going to be billionaires. We said it right here. You had it right here. Yes. In Jesus name, you know. So, yeah, we're learning. We're learning. For now, there's not much action happening, but there's a lot of learning happening.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"So funny though, because it was just one day I just woke up, I was like, I'm craving Ghana pie. And I was like, actually, what do you mean make it? I thought it was like, you know, so hard, like, it would be impossible for me to make a pie. But then she's like, that's one thing I really love about my sis, like she's gonna push you to, you know, do, do what it is that you desire, what's on your heart. And yeah, and every time she did that, you know, I would come out great. So I decided to, you know, look it up on YouTube, check out everything, got my ingredients, made my first pie. She tried it guys, she loved it. She was like, it was good and all of that. Probably has a different side to the story. But let me, let me tell you all the tea with regards to her first pie. So her first pie, I'll give you like a five out of 10. But, but it was her first and I didn't want to like dumping his spirit because like, she literally spent the whole day researching. And then she go ahead ingredients and she put in the hard work. I saw her put it in the hard work. I saw her go through every single step just to bake that pie. And so when I tasted that pasta, Oh my God, you, this is so good. This is really, really, really great. Like, wow, I'm so sure you did. She was gusting the pie up. Oh my goodness. I was like, it is so good. Who told you it's not that good. Like, it is so good. And she's like, really? Exactly, because I was doubting. I was like, trees, crumbly. I said, is it not? She was like, oh it's good. What are you talking about? It is so good. Like we could literally even sell it today.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"That's amazing, Tracy. No, but thank you. Thank you. Those are really good stuff. I love your Bible study session coloring time. I think it's even that very much scientifically proven. It's kind of like an active recall type of thing that you do. So you actively listen so that when it's time to recall this stuff, you have it. You have something down like you're not just, you know, reproducing what you just wrote or what you just heard. That way it sticks better, you know. Right. Because I realized that when I used to do the whole like listen and jot it thing. But I realized that I would jot it down and I wouldn't flip the pages again until like months down the lane. And then I'm like, casually, it's not an intention. It's not intentional. You need to flip the page. Like I'm bored and I see the book and I'm like, oh, let me see what I wrote in the book. And then I see certain things I wrote in the book. And then I'm like, oh, I remember this preaching. I remember when this man said this. I remember when this lady said that. Yeah. But yeah, I wasn't actively listening. I wasn't actively learning. But when I switched it up, that's the thing. It's like it's more of trial and error. So when I switched it up, I realized that me regurgitating the information at the end of the preaching was working better for me than me like writing it as it goes. And then also I combine it with coloring because I love to color pages and that is happiness for me. So now I've associated something that makes me happy with listening to scripture. So every single time I'm going to listen to scripture, I have programmed myself to be happy. Is that whole psychological? I don't know how to explain it. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, yeah, that is awesome. Thank you. Thank you. The next category that we would like to tackle would be our knowledge category, which is I want to say like the next biggest one for us, because it's really, really important. Like when you invest in your mental, mentally, mentally, how does Joanna invest in her mind and her knowledge and all of that? So the first thing I'd say is how I'm actively working towards my career goals by basically obtaining the necessary educational qualifications and the knowledge required for success in my chosen role. Yeah, I am very science inclined. I love anything that has to do with the human body and just being able to learn all of those things and how the human body operates in its full glory is just very fascinating to me. And I love that. So I just enjoy studying that. And that is what I'm currently studying about. So, yes, that's going to be the first one. The second thing I'd say, I haven't been much of a reader prior to this year. I wouldn't even call myself like I wouldn't say I was even like a casual reader like you barely see me just pick up a book and, you know, just like read, read, read, read, read. However, this year, I made a promise myself, I put it on my vision board that I was going to read more books. Okay. And I, you know what Tracy said about trial and error, or even the Bible study. I did a bit of that for just like reading books, and I realized, I didn't have a lot of like a long attention span when it came to just sitting down and just reading one book for hours, an end. However, I was very much auditory, even in like learning stuff. And so I applied that and I realized, you know, there's an option for audio books where you can listen to someone read the story to you, and stuff like that. And I implemented that and I realized that was way helpful for me. And so that is like a way that I am actually exposing myself to knowledge and to read more books. Yeah. Also, under knowledge, there's an aspect for skill development. Right. And that, that looks like many different things for everyone. For me, this particular year, I have improved on my cooking, specifically, my baking, and I, you know, I learned how to make Ghana pie. And Tracy was here.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Well, when it comes to me and investing in my spirituality, so I did this at the beginning of the year was praying. So I dedicate, I have a time block in the day where I just pray. So when I wake up, I do have like my routine of like waking up and praying and yada, yada, yada, yada. But I have a time block where I cancel out every single distraction and I literally go into my prayer closet and I just spend time with God and I pray. And no matter where, no matter what I'm doing, I will literally stop. So I try to plan my whole day around that. So let's say I'm going out and I scheduled it for like three hours in the morning. So I know that if I go out and I'm going to be out late and I'll probably chip into my prayer time, I would have to rearrange my outing so that it doesn't get into the prayer time. So I make sure to get home by the time my time block for the prayer is slotted so that I can have the prayer. Priority is, it is a priority. And then also, this is something I took from my mom. So she has a day that she spends fasting and that's the day that she was born. So she spends that day fasting, praying, meditating. And on that day is like her personal Sabbath day. So she told me about it and I adopted it as well. So it's something I've been doing. I've been doing it consistently for a couple of years. So on that day, you will see that I wouldn't be active on social media and I would literally just be intimate with God. I enjoy my intimacy with God. And then the third thing I do is I really love music. I love to listen to music a lot. I'm a musical person. I'm a musical incline. So I tend to use my music to worship God a lot. So in the morning, when I'm doing an activity, when I'm cooking, I'm brushing my teeth. When I'm showering, I have to have music playing. So when I'm brushing my teeth in the mornings, I have gospel music playing. And then later on in the evenings when I'm about to sleep, I have gospel music playing as well. And I don't do anything. I'm literally just laying down on my bed and listening to the song play and just soaking it and taking in the words of the worshiper and trying to connect with the worshiper. So that we can both worship the Holy Spirit and worship God together. The fourth thing that I do is Bible study. So I tend to do a little Bible study. I'll sit down with my book. And this is how I Bible study. So I sit down with my book. I sit down with a coloring book. My book is my Bible, by the way. And I'll have a message playing in the background. So I'm listening to the message and I'm coloring. And then when the preacher says a scripture, I flip my Bible to the scripture. And then I read the scripture and I jot down the scripture in my notebook. And then I go back to coloring again while I'm still listening to what the preacher is saying. So at the end of the sermon, I write a summary of what I heard the preacher say so that it's engraved in my mind. Instead of like listening, I know some people tend to like jot down while the preacher is speaking. So like as the preacher is speaking, they are writing it down and it works for them. But for me, I feel like I tend to grasp more knowledge when I listen. And then I have to regurgitate the information at the end of the scripture. And then I'm like, OK, so what did I what did I learn and what did I remember? And then I write it down and I jot that down. So I feel like that works better for me. So, yeah, basically these I think four things. Basically what I do, pray, fast, Bible study and then just listen to music, Christian music a lot, gospel music a lot. That's what I do when it comes to investing in myself spiritually.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"All right. Shall we pray? I hope you're not driving, but if you are, just join us in spirit. Shall we pray? Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for another great opportunity to be here and to have conversation about topics that you have placed on our hearts. Lord God, once again, we are your vessels and we ask the Lord Jesus, you would make us great mouthpieces and you would help us to represent you here on earth. Lord, as we speak, give us the right words to say and touch the hearts of our listeners as well. May we all learn something from this episode as we listen in the mighty name of Jesus. We pray with so much thanksgiving. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Joanna, for praying. I love it when you pray. You tell me all the time, so thank you. Because I do. I truly do love you when you pray. All right, y'all. So as I said before, the episode title for the week is Am I Ready? Joanna, are you ready? I'm ready. I'm as ready as I can be. What are you even ready for? For the episode. What you talking about? Oh, the title. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah, that. I'm getting ready. I'm not ready yet. She said the episode is a side hustle at this point. Absolutely not. I'm ready to hear what you have to say. Right. So as Joanna rightfully said, we started off last week with Boaz and Ruth's story, where we explore the concept of Ruth's waiting before she got into a relationship, which eventually led to her getting married to Boaz. So this week we're going to dissect it. We're going to go into it again. As we last week, we gave you an analogy of the trophy. So if you are the medal, we did say that the medal doesn't develop legs and go after the runners, but the runners go after the medal. Right now, on the day of the tournament, if it is soccer, if it is football, if it is track, whatever it is. The medal is polished and hang the trophy is polished. The cup is polished and then the players play the runners run and the winner is announced. The person gets handed the trophy, the medal, the cup, whatever it may be. But they know that it goes through polishing and is shown. It is scrubbed, is rubbed, and then it sparkles in the sunlight. The spark first occurs at night, so it sparkles in the dark when the light is shining on it, it sparkles. And that's what you have to do in your season of waiting. Oh, that is an amazing analogy. The Holy Spirit is moving. Ah, yes, please.
Club 31 Pod
A highlight from Am I Ready???
"Body odor? Body odor? B .O.? At this time, you are smelly. It's impossible. So you are what you attract. Develop yourself. We are live. I'm excited. I'm excited. How is everybody doing? I don't know, but that sounded like some cartoon song. It's true. You're thinking everybody clap your hands. That's not a cartoon. What's that from a cartoon? No, no. No, it looked like it sounded like it was. Okay, whatever. It isn't, but yeah, you got me. That was it. Everybody clap your hands. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap your hands. One hop this time. Two hops this time. Boom, boom. Slide to the right. Slide to the right. Criss cross. Criss cross. We're excited, as you can tell. Welcome to the club, everybody. Welcome to the club. We welcome you to the club today with the Cupid Shuffle. That's what you heard us singing. Uh oh, yes please. Go there, girl. I love that. That was a good one. It's a good one. You're welcome to the club, y 'all. And you are met with your favorite DJs, stroke hosts, today for the episode three. Oh my gosh, episode three. Wow. Already? Hi. Oh, I have exciting news, guys. So guess who is starting with our third episode. And we honestly cannot thank you, our lovely listeners in a breath super, super grateful. Y 'all holding us down. We are literally charting with our second episode. And this is our third episode, so we know we're going to be charting even higher when we release this one. Yes. And honestly, God richly, richly, richly, richly bless each and every single one of you that have been involved, that have been sharing, listening, leaving reviews, doing all of that. God richly, richly, richly, richly bless you for that. And with that being said, we go right into it for housekeeping. We entreat you to follow our social media pages, Twitter and Instagram at clap31pod, where you are kept up to deal with every single thing that's going to be happening in the club. Also, I run the Twitter page, so Twitter is lit. Honestly, you should engage on our Twitter page. Follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram so that when we post, you can contribute, share your stories, engage, tell us what you think about the podcast, tell us what you think about this week's next week, the week before, the week in 10 years. We're going to be here for a while. So yes, make sure to keep leaving us reviews and sharing. Subscribe to the podcast on all the streaming platforms you're going to be listening to this on. Leave a review. If you like this week's episode, please make sure to leave a review under it so that people will know about it and people can have access to the messages as well. Don't get keep. I know this is such a lovely podcast that you'd want to get keep, but please let's not get keep. Let's share, share, share, share, share. And that's it for this week. Thank you, girl. So y 'all, this episode is going to be a continuation of episode two. We're going to be picking up from where we left off in episode two. So if you haven't been able to listen to episode two and you jumped right into this, I would admonish you to kindly go back and listen to episode two before listening to this beautiful one. So maybe a little recap of last week's episode would help us transition better into this week's. So for last week, we delved into the world of dating and pursuit and we explored different perspectives, mainly biblical examples. And we established that the woman's responsibility is not to pursue, but to be pursued. And we looked at examples from Adam and Eve and Ruth and Boaz. And we also looked at a scripture from Proverbs 18, 22, where it says he who finds a wife found a good thing and not the other way around. It doesn't say she who finds a husband. Right. And for this week, we're going to be looking specifically at Ruth and how she prepared herself to be pursued by Boaz. And last week we established that Ruth was not concerned about how she was going to get Boaz to woo her and stuff like that. She was very much focused on herself and how she could, you know, make a living for herself and for her mother in law, because we all know that Ruth was a widow and she lived with her mother in law. And she was also very hard working and she just possessed a lot of great qualities that helped her flourish as a woman. And that allowed Boaz to notice her and pursue her. And so in this episode, we're going to be delving more into this period of self -discovery and preparation. And we're going to draw on personal examples as well as what we have seen other people do and what we have learned in general in our lives. So, yes, let's delve right into it. And so we befittingly called this episode, Am I Ready? And before we get right into the episode, we'd love for our very prayerful Joanna to pray us into the episode. Wow. Isn't that beautiful? I'll take it.
Evangelism On Fire
A highlight from Sydney Sundance Smith's - God Story
"Welcome to Evangelism on Fire podcast. My name is Mark Thomas, an ordained pastor, a teacher of the best selling book of all time, your host, and most importantly, your evangelism coach. Every episode, I bring you an inspiring message to help you live the most exciting life God has created you to live by actively sharing your faith in Jesus with others. I believe in the power of the gospel and the potential of all Christians to live out the mission of the great commission. I believe the best way for Christians to grow is to go. It's time for a revolution in every Christian's life around the world so that every person everywhere around the world can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ from a friend or a family member through one -on -one evangelism. I'm so thankful for our time together today. I absolutely love spending time with you, evangelism on fire nation. I believe this podcast will truly inspire you and I believe it will inspire so many people that you know. And if you're inspired and feeling moved to share this, then please message some friends, post this on social media and let people know about this episode so we can get this message out there more. I appreciate you and everyone listening right now. And a quick reminder, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, to rate it, to review it, to spread the word on social media and spread the message of evangelism on fire forward. Many people are looking for hope these days, especially young people. They wanna be part of something bigger. And here at evangelism on fire ministry, we have big plans to reach them in 2023. Here's where you will not find hope. You won't find hope in the culture. You won't find hope in technology. You won't find hope even in many ways in politics. Now, all of these things have their place, but true hope can only be found in God. The message that we wanna share is that God wants to give hope to the young generation and all generations, that there is hope for them through a relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. And we wanna offer this hope to as many people as possible in 2023 through our outreach ministries, which of course includes our EOF podcast ministry. I'm asking you to join us at EOF ministry and become a partner. A partner is just a friend that makes a regular commitment to us each and every month. They stand by us. That enables us to respond to the opportunities that are coming our way. In many ways, we live in a hopeless world, but through Christ, we have hope. Life without God is a hopeless end. Life with Him is an endless hope. Join us right now and become a part of our team and let's reach the world with the most important message that exists, the gospel message. Join us for the plans we have for ministry in 2023 by becoming an Evangelism on Fire ministry partner. Are you ready? Well, this is your next step. Go to today's show notes and click on the giving link to become a monthly partner by setting up a monthly donation or go to our website evangelismonfire .com. Click on the donate button to give a monthly reoccurring donation or a one -time gift. Thank you for joining us to give hope to the world. All right, welcome Evangelism on Fire nation to today's podcast episode. Man, I've got a big time treat for you guys today. We have on our podcast episode today, Sydney Sundance Smith. She's 31 years old. And let me tell you what, she's on a mission to be one of the world's top female bare knuckle fighters. And listen, she has her eye on the title. And you know what? Something that I love about Sydney is that she is a true spiritual warrior and she carries her faith and her father's memory with her everywhere she goes and into the ring. Sydney Sundance Smith, welcome to Evangelism on Fire podcast. How are you doing? I'm blessed and highly favored. Yeah, I'm doing well. I feel really good. You know, I'm in a really good place in my life, so. That's awesome. I'm so happy for you. So you know what? So my audience, Evangelism on Fire Nation, so they know more about you. I gave you a little introduction, but tell us more about who you are. Oh, wow. I feel like that's such a big question, right? Like the, what does Shrek say? Like an ogre, I have like an onion, I have ears. Yeah, I don't know, man. I'm just like a kid from the middle of nowhere. I grew up on a horse farm. All three of us, my brother and my sister and myself, we were all born at home. We were not born in a hospital. Oh, you were born at home? Not a hospital, at home. Oh, wow. And so for my sister's birth, my dad actually had to deliver her because the midwife was somewhere else. And so she didn't get there. Oh, wow. So my dad had to deliver my sister. That is wild. What was going on with the midwife? It starts wild. She was delivering another baby like across the county. Right. Wow, that's such a cool story to start this podcast off. Hey, it's interesting from starting to talking with that. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just grew up out like in the middle of nowhere in a place called Middlebrook. Doesn't even have enough people to be considered a town and still considered a village to this day. When I first heard about you, I was when I was training at Mixed Martial Arts Institute here in Richmond, Virginia. And I would hear your name mentioned, you know, in my training sessions. Then I got to be good friends with Gigi, who she owned MMA Institute around the area that she lived. In Charlottesville, yeah. Yeah, for a little bit. And through Rick McCoy and Tyus Thomas and David Gladfelter, I got to know more about you because I would just hear your name around, you know, the Institute. So let's get right into it. How did you come to faith in Jesus Christ? So I actually, I grew up in it. I just kind of always believed he was there, that he was and that his son existed. And I didn't really know too much about the Holy Spirit growing up. That wasn't really something, it's not really something that Presbyterians talk about a lot, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, I had a relationship with him for, you know, most of my life, but it really didn't, it was like, you know, like the shockwave kind of hit more when I was like 16, 17. And I was really starting to go through like some really serious suicide and depression. And I got really, you know, just really into the word. And, you know, my mom bought me a study Bible on Easter, the year I turned 17. And I still have it, I still use it every day. And so that really just kind of, cause I just have this insatiable appetite just like to know things. I don't know why I just do. And so, yeah, so giving me a study Bible was a great way. And I just never looked back, you know. And that's, I mean, I've had my ups and downs, right? You know what I mean? I'm not saying, I've walked a perfect path since I was a teenager that is far from true. But, you know, it doesn't mean that I've ever stopped believing in God or loving God or talking to God. You know, I think that I just kind of have this different understanding of who he is and like what he wants to do. Like he's never gonna give up on you, you know? And I think that's something that's really important and not something that I really want to get out there is that I'm not saying go out there and do all these bad things. We shouldn't sin much so that grace can abound much. But what I'm saying is that like, grace covers a multitude of sins. That's what I'm saying. And there's no shame, no condemnation for those that are made new in Christ. And that's what I'm trying to come and talk about is there's a way, we've kind of gotten to this point as a society where if anybody starts saying like, thus sayeth the Lord, or you quote the word in a way that people know that you're quoting the word to them, they just shut down, right? And so I don't know, I just feel like God has written it on my heart in a way that, you know, I just talk about it. I'm not trying to shove it down your throat. I'm not trying to like preach at you, but I just, I feel like God is so enmeshed in everything and every single moment of every single day that I mean, his word is just one more example of that. And speaking it is very powerful and that's something I learned along the way. And so to speak it, you have to know the word. Say that again, Sydney, maybe that one more time. To speak the word, you have to know the word. So yeah, you know, write it on your heart. Yeah, to speak the word, you have to know the word, you know, and I've read some articles about you that you are in the word daily. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Every day. In my study Bible, Josephus, you know, I've got like the concordance, the Hebrew and the Greeks dictionaries. Like I really do, like, I truly go through it all, all the time. I just love it, you know. I think it's really interesting. And I think that when you study the different translations, not that anyone is better or worse than any of the others, but I think that, you know, they all have something to offer. And, you know, that goes for like the Hebrew and the Greek too, because their vocab, like, I don't know how to explain it, but their vocabulary was richer. It was like more dense than ours is. I feel like the words that they chose to communicate what was going on or how they were feeling or what God was saying were chosen for specific reasons. They did a lot of like play on words with, you know, like was it Adam and I can't remember the other one, like that that's similar to his name, but it's like Adan or whatever, you know. And like, so one means Adam and one means something that's like completely opposite and bad that he did or whatever, you know. Hey, you know what, if someone's listening right now, right, so this is mostly a Christian podcast, but a lot of those listeners out there right now, they're not reading the word daily, say like you are or I am. What encouragement would you give to them to pick up the best -selling book of all time, the Bible, right, and get in the word and, you know, taste that a little bit every day. What would you, what encouragement would you give to them? I mean, what do you have to lose, right? Like there's so many places in the Bible where it talks about how we should meditate on God's word. And that's not just sitting there and being like, oh, you know, I'm thinking about your word. But the Hebrew and the Greek actually means to like speak on the utterance, to talk to yourself about it. And honestly, you know, you shouldn't look at it as a chore. I know for a long time, you know, it's not like I've read my Bible every single day for my entire life, right? Like we all go through stages and phases and seasons, but, you know, habits are what you consistently do. So, you know, it's gonna take time to get to that point where, you know, you make it, it's just part of what you do every day. You have your coffee and you sit down and you spend time with God first thing, you know, that's kind of like what I like to do. Just pick a time that works for you. It doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm spending 45 minutes, you know, just literally anything is better than nothing, right? Like God just wants you to say, hey, you're important to me and I'm taking this time out of my day to just spend this time with you. Set yourself up to like read five verses or read a chapter a day or, you know, start with small bits. But I mean, honestly, try not to look at it as a chore. I mean, you're meeting with the creator of the universe and magnificent things happen. Ah, come on. I mean, you know, Jesus is the word, right? Yeah. So, I mean, if you shun the word, you're kind of like shunning Jesus in a way. And he came to give us life more abundantly. So how can you have abundant life if you kind of like refuse the one who's trying to give it to you? Wow, that is, that's deep. That's profound. That is so good. That's the Holy Spirit now. That's the Holy Spirit. Speaking in and through you. Just do the talking. Cause I ramble. People know that. I'll talk forever, especially when it's about God. So I was like, God, please just let the Holy Spirit. Isn't it cool when the Holy Spirit speaks in you and through you and you hear what you just say and you're like, wow, thank you, Holy Spirit. That was totally you. Yeah, that was not me. You're like, whoa, that was good. Yeah, that was fire. That was fire, straight fire. Yeah, I was praying for like tongues of fire to be dropping on people in Albuquerque and stuff. Like it would be so heavy in the arena. Like I pray for that kind of stuff. Like to me, when I walked into church on Sunday, cause I've been doing like a really in -depth study on Joshua. I actually did a pretty in -depth study on judges. And then I went back and did Joshua cause God was like, go read Joshua. And I was like, all right, cool. So that's what I did. And you know, so I walked into church on Sunday and I just, I felt God say, take your shoes off. This is Holy ground, you know? And that was what I prayed over the ring the last time I fought in May, cause they let you go out and check the ring out. And so like, I prayed in the spirit and, you know, people call that speaking in tongues. To me, I call it praying in the spirit. It's personal between me and God. But you know, and I just remember saying like, this is Holy ground. Do you know what I mean? And I like closed the whole circle of it and like, you know, I just, and I pray about it before I go, pray about like his spirit being there, you know, and the Bible says that, that God himself is enthroned on the praises of Israel. And then people want to ask me, like, why do you walk out to Christian rapper, Christian praise music? And I'm like, why wouldn't I, you know, I'm inviting, I'm inviting God to come in and like come into my situation. You know what I mean? And just, and yeah. So to me, it's, it's a lot different, you know? So much of it is spiritually based for me. I mean, even like the hashtag, watch me rise that I use, right? That actually comes from one of my favorite verses in Judges. And it's because it was a woman judge who spoke at Deborah. And you know, I'm always about like the women warriors, like the outcasts that, you know, in society it's like says to be ladylike and they're like, no, I'm going to go fight with the dudes. Like that's who I've always identified with, you know, like Mulan was my favorite Disney movie. Like, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I don't know. I lost her. So, you know what you, you mentioned a moment ago, August. So you have an upcoming fight Albuquerque, right? Just trying to trace that one back, but yeah. But you also mentioned that how you went into the ring and prayed at your last fight. Now your last fight, you beat your opponent. You landed 98 punches to her 26. And you know what I'm like that. Yeah. And you only suffered a few bruises. Tell us about that fight. You know, there was a lot of craziness going into that fight that, you know, I just kind of briefly spoke on and that's pretty much, you know, most of like that's like the gist of what I'll say about it just to like, you know, maintain a modicum of respectability, but basically my corners last minute abandoned me for no good reason. And like one of them wasted a promotion flight and all this stuff, like it was insane. And I'm like at the airport, you know, trying to figure this stuff out. My friend drove down from South Carolina with her mom and her four year old son and like to corner me. And man, it was just wild. Like so many God moments happened. You know what I mean? It was like for every curse, there are two blessings. Like that was, that came true. You know what I mean? Like that was just so evident. And it wasn't just for me. It was for so many other people around me too. Like my friend who came down, she had been, you know, kind of like, you know, a rough state, a stagnant place in her faith with God. And, you know, I guess was feeling some type of way. And when she saw like everything that had happened and how God just like made everything just boom, boom, boom, boom, she was like, look, I told my whole family, there's no way I'll ever question again, if that is real, you know? So literally it was just nothing but God. I was just having a blast. Like I had to put all that stuff out of my mind. I didn't feel any emotion. Like, you know what I mean? I felt some, but I just prayed for protection and peace and to stay on point for what we came there to do. You know, like I had, like I have people who like, I have prayer warriors who literally like that is what we do is we pray over these events. It's not just we're praying over my fight. We're praying over the event as a whole, you know, we're praying over all of the millions of live viewers, you know, that's what we're doing. And it, I mean, hey, I couldn't have, I mean, it was other than, you know, just wanting to push the pace a little bit more. I feel like, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a bad start to be KFC, you know what I'm saying? And you know what? BKFC, now, one thing I love about you, okay? You're a different breed, okay? You have martial artists, you have your MMA fighters, but tell my audience, maybe some of them don't, they do not know what BKFC is. You're a whole different beast, okay? All right, you're a whole different human beings. So evangelism on fire nation. If you don't know what BKFC is, listen to this. Tell my audience what type of fighter you are, Sydney Sundance Smith. So I started off in MMA, but I was waiting very patiently for them to open my weight class. And when they did, we fight with no gloves, just a little bit of wrap support around your wrist. And you know, I take down some of that. You're talking bare knuckle. Bare knuckles, yeah. Bare knuckles. 100%. She said 100%. Facts, yes. I'm so like, okay, so they're coming up with this new card. It's one in Thailand. It's like the super fight or whatever. And they're letting them do, it's a special rules, bare knuckle Muay Thai. Ooh. I have been bugging the crap out of them. Like, hey, can we get a bare knuckle Muay Thai? And they're like crickets. And then this happens and I'm like, I see y 'all. I see what's happening. Y 'all keep me in mind at 1 .15, I told them, I told all of them, I've told my manager, I've told Dave Felt, I mean, you know, I've told them all. I said, if you start a bare knuckle Muay Thai, don't even ask me any questions, you just sign me up. Sign you up. Every single time you have a fight for me, don't even ask me, don't ask me no questions, just sign me up. Don't do that until the day I cannot fight for. That appeals to me. So how do you go from MMA to bare knuckle fighting? How does that transition happen? Very carefully, I guess. It's hard not to kick people and knee people. I mean, honestly, I was just waiting for them, like I said, to open my weight class. It's been around for five years now. So you're a straw weight, correct? Yeah, yes. All right. They had 1 .25 for a while and I, you know, I've been offered a couple of different, different promotional bare knuckle, you know, fights at 1 .25. But I just, you know, I had a lot of medical issues and stuff and, you know, even now healthy, I have to, I have to work to be at like 1 .32 walking around, you know, like a healthy 1 .32. So there's no way I could fight at 1 .25. Those girls cut from like an insane amount and yeah, no. I'm good at 1 .15, you know, like I can make the weight. It doesn't bother me. I make 1 .15, like my body just automatically knows like, oh, it's time to cut weight. And it just does it. Like I really, you know, I just have this really good system and as long as I stick to it, then I really don't have any problems. I cut weight and I feel so strong. It's so weird, but it's just, I've gotten it down to that, down to that point, you know. You know, one thing that I've heard about you, tell me if this is true, but I've heard that you're a fighter who likes to get hit. Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so like, you know, Donald Cerrone, you know, he kind of like a little bit of a slow starter sometimes. He's got to get hit a few times to like kind of wake him up. And then he's just like, you know, like back in the day, that's, that's kind of like me. You know what I mean? It's like, if you don't, if you're not going to exchange with me, it's kind of hard. Like, yeah, I mean, I still fight you, right? But it's not going to be the same level of fight. You know, if you're, if you want to bang with me, you're going to, like, I know people think like, maybe I'm just, you know, exaggerating or whatever, but like, you're going to get a different, a different side of me. Like you're going to bring out something in me that is like, oh, okay, you think that was hard, like my turn. You know what I mean? Like I get to hit you now, right? So I don't know. I just, I love it. I've always loved it. I fought Chelsea McCoy for my first fight, right? Like Rick McCoy's daughter, first ever MMA fight. She hit me so hard, I fought double. I'm not even kidding, right? I didn't know what to do. I had never, like, I was training out of a basement with some, you know, with a guy who had a few amateur fights under his belt. Like, it wasn't like I was Rick McCoy's daughter trained at the MMA Institute, right? I apparently even knew what the MMA Institute was. And I was just like, yeah, I'll fight her. Everybody was like, you're really going to fight her? And I was like, yeah. And then like, I didn't get knocked out or submitted or anything, right? Like we had a good fight, but yeah, she made me see double and I was just kind of like, you know, it was in that moment where it was, it was kind of like, you're either going to do this and you're going to love it. Like, that's going to, that's going to do it for you. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or you're done. You know what I mean? This is not for you. Yeah. And I was just like, I shook my head and I was like, well, then I was like, just pick one, you know? So it kind of solidified that. And you know, so it's not the last time I've seen double in a fight.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Mystery Meat
"Morning. Ashley wasn't kidding. I am glad to be back. I really, really love this church. It's evident every time we go away, and I absolutely love preaching and teaching the Word of God. I get a little jealous when I'm away, to be honest with you, when I see someone else standing behind my pulpit. Just truthfully, I'm jealous over this. I love doing this. It's the greatest privilege in the world. Well, if you're just visiting us, we go through books of the Bible, and we're going through one of the, as if they can be ranked, right? But John has done some incredible work down through history. This book has been used to convert souls, the most unlikely of souls. And so whenever we have taken a little bit of a break, I've been gone for two weeks, and so some of you may have no idea. Some of you can't remember what you did last night, let alone two weeks ago, right? So whenever I'm away for a little while, I like to do a two -minute review of the purpose of the book so that you know why this book was written. In case some of you are here and are not familiar with the Bible and how it works, it's a library. As a matter of fact, biblio means library, and so there are 66 of these books, and each one of them has a different purpose. And the Gospel of John has its own unique, distinct purpose, and here's the job of every interpreter. Every interpreter's job is not to find clever ways to make it mean something that's relevant for their culture. That's not the job of an interpreter. The job of an interpreter is simple. Get in the head of the original author to the original audience. I have to try to find out what John meant. Who cares what we think it means, right? Give me an amen. We want to know what John says it means, and we want to know what John says it means to the first readers. We're not the first readers. This was written to a unique people group a long time ago in the Middle East. And so let's start up again by reframing our mind according to what the author says he wrote this for. At the very, very end of the book, it's 21 chapters long, and at the very, very end of the book, he tells us flat out why he wrote the book. Here's what he says. He says, Jesus performed many other signs, miraculous signs that is, in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book. In other words, you're going to have to go somewhere else for those. These, the contents of this book, these have been written so that, here comes the author's purpose statement, so that you may, say the word, be. So that's purpose number one, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And there's a second purpose, that believing you may have life in his name. This, what you're reading, is a true, historical, eye -witness account of the life and ministry of a man who lived in the Middle East, who rose from the dead. That means, if someone raises from the dead and defeats something that you can't defeat, you should probably listen to what he has to say, don't you think? John says, I'm recording every word that man who rose from the dead had to say, so that you can, two things. One, believe, and two, live. Here's the point of the book. The point of the book is to help people believe an eye -witness account to the life of a man who died, and then three days later, got up and walked around. But it's not just so that you can say, okay, I believe. No more John. No. It's so that as you experience seasons of doubt in your life, you come back to John and say, oh yeah, this is why I should keep on believing. And when I'm struggling to believe, John will help to reaffirm your feet on solid ground, so that you go through your whole life saying, I believe. Tomorrow, I'm going to believe again. The next day, I'm going to believe again. John is for the person sitting here who's not a believer. And they know they're not a believer, and someone drug you here. You're here on purpose, and John is written for you. But John is also for the person who's been a believer for the last 66 years. And you know John, but maybe you're in a season of doubt. Maybe you're struggling because you just lost your spouse. John is a book for you. So, before we go any further and dive back into John, we are in, I started in April. That's about five months ago. We're in the fourth chapter of 21 chapters, and we're about halfway through the fourth chapter. And so, I'm sure that all of you remember exactly where we left off, but just in case there's one person who can't remember, let's repurpose our hearts. Let's go before God, every individual. I'm not going to do this for you. You're here as a worship service. That means there's a part for you. You're going to go before God right now, and you're going to say, Lord, I'm here to hear from you. And you spoke through John, and so speak to me through your servant John. Let's do it together. Father, I'm just a tool to act on behalf of the people who are here to meet with their God. As Craig said, you are a living God. No one else can claim that, but we can because Christ is alive. And so, we put our faith in you. I pray that you would help every person here to commit their heart and mind to not just listening to the word of God, but doing what it says. Lord, speak to us, for we are listening. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Fourth chapter of John, it reads like a movie script. I read it again. It's like the 20th time that I've read it just this month. And this week as I was preparing, I read it, and I'm like, some chapters read like a movie script, and some are not like that. Fourth chapter of John, it literally is set up for a producer and director to just go and put this on film. And I couldn't help but this week as I was reading it, my mind went back to a show that I watched when I was growing up. It was the original Batman show with Burt Ward and Adam West from the 70s. How many of you know what show I'm talking about? Just curious. I had a feeling. I grew up on that show. My mom would put it on for me when I'd come home from school. And there was this thing that they did in the show where whenever they would transition to another part, the narrator would come on and say, meanwhile, back in Gotham City, or meanwhile in the Batcave, and then you'd see the transition. The screen would roll, and you'd hear the doodle -a -doodle -a -doo, remember? It's showing you what's happening at a different part at the same time. John 4 is written like that because the text we're going to start with opens up in a meanwhile in another part of town, and my mind just went back to the old Batman as I was raised on. Here's what you're going to learn. If you've been here for a while, then you know that we're in one of the most beautiful dialogues that really I've ever taken in history. It's between Jesus and a promiscuous Samaritan woman, and he is tender with her. Isn't he tender with her? We're going to get back to that dialogue next week, but the writer, the narrator of the story, interjects. He pauses the story, and he wants you to stop thinking about the woman and Jesus for just a moment because there's an absolutely important lesson that Jesus wants to teach his disciples, and it is a major, major pause. And so this morning, I invite you to turn in your Bibles to John 4. We're going to start in verse 31, and we're going to go down through 38. Not very much, but it's a meanwhile, so you can see the screen roll in your head, and here's what it says. John 4, 31 through 38.
Mark Levin
Caller: Impeaching Biden Is a Great Idea, But Harris Is Just As Bad
"As bad as making speeches as he you is hear that speech which she made you know about time well there's something about time well we have time and there's i mean what in the world are you talking about she's as bumbling as he is yeah i i now hold on now come on let's be realistic here she she's not the smartest chick you've ever seen in politics but she's not as dumb as joe biden is right now all right let's let's dial back the crazy joe biden's on a different scale right now with with not being able to put together coherent sentences but this idea as klyburn says that you know hey this is a guy that are you know 31 percent of americans have a favorable view of kamala harris even lower than biden it's because she's quote a woman of woman color to and be vice first president so she'd be just fine as the president look if you're at the white house tonight you're concerned over this uh in a way that would make many of you very very i i mean you got to be sitting around going we need a vice president to bring something to table because there's no way that you can vote for joe biden this election not think hey there's a real chance his running there's hate okay a real chance that his running mate is going to end up being the president of the united states of america and i also say this i know why kamala harris was picked it's because she looked at joe biden on stage and called him a racist this is the same guy by the way just called an african -american l l o o j a boy this week right so it's real like the racism is real and they basically like all right crap we gotta we gotta go with this right like this is what we're gonna have to do we're gonna have to we're gonna have to find a woman get kamala harris on here so she'll shut up about the race baiting all right that's gonna shut up on the race baiting and that'll be it well that'll
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from SPECIAL REPORT: SBF TRIAL 09/25 Update
"Welcome to the SBF trial, a Coindesk podcast network newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman -Fried will try to stay out of prison. Follow the Coindesk podcast network to get the audio each morning with content from the Coindesk regulation team and voiced by Wondercraft AI. If convicted of wire fraud and or conspiracy charges, FTX founder Sam Bankman -Fried will probably spend quite a bit of time behind bars. But there's a good chance the 31 -year -old won't spend the rest of his life in prison. Bankman -Fried's trial tied to the operation and collapse of FTX and its affiliated hedge fund, Alameda Research, kicks off next week. Prosecutors will have to prove that he knowingly lied to his customers or lenders, knew it was wrong, was trying to defraud them, or knowingly worked with at least one other person to try and defraud lenders, customers, or investors. The burden of proof rests on the prosecution's shoulders. The defense team, in contrast, only has to convince a jury that the U .S. Department of Justice didn't successfully make its case that Bankman -Fried violated the law. The charges themselves are committing wire fraud on FTX customers, conspiring to commit wire fraud on FTX customers, committing wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders, conspiring to commit wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders, conspiring to commit securities fraud against FTX investors, conspiring to commit commodities fraud against FTX customers, and conspiring to commit money laundering to hide the proceeds of wire fraud on FTX customers. Of these, only charges one and three, wire fraud on FTX customers and Alameda Research lenders, are substantive charges, meaning the Department of Justice is alleging that Bankman -Fried himself actively committed the crimes. The DOJ in its proposed jury instructions asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to clarify that there is no need to prove that the crime or crimes actually were committed with conspiracy charges unlike the substantive charges. The fraud -related charges are relatively similar, Jordan Estes, a partner at Kramer Levin, told Coindesk. They all involve Bankman -Fried allegedly lying to customers or lenders. The DOJ will focus on the lies and deceit they're claiming he engaged in. Part of this is intent, Estes said. If Bankman -Fried's defense team can prove he didn't intend to try and commit fraud, he may be found not guilty of the charges arrayed against him. The defense's job is to argue that the DOJ did not make its case. With an advice of counsel defense, which Bankman -Fried's attorneys have said they'll make, the argument may be that the FTX founder ran his actions by his lawyers while at the exchange, and they okayed them. The DOJ noted that under federal sentencing guidelines, convictions under the wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy charges each carry a 20 -year maximum prison sentence, while the commodities fraud, securities fraud, and campaign finance conspiracy charges each carry a maximum five -year sentence. Totaled, the original eight charges Bankman -Fried faced—one was later dropped—carried a total sentence of 115 years. Though there's headlines suggesting Bankman -Fried could spend over 100 or 150 years in prison, in reality, he will likely spend nowhere near that much time behind bars should he be convicted. For one thing, even if there's multiple convictions, the sentences are more likely to be concurrent than consecutive. Several lawyers Coindesk spoke to said that Bankman -Fried, if convicted, could spend 10 to 20 years or so in prison, given the severity of the crimes and the estimated losses. Of course, Judge Kaplan has broad discretion, and he will ultimately set the final sentence. Even 20 years is a pretty long time. That's an entire human growing up to adulthood, or greater than the amount of time it's been since the first iPhone was released to its transforming much of society. Want to follow along? Sign up for Coindesk's new daily newsletter, The SBF Trial, bringing you insights from the courthouse and around the case. You can get the podcast each day right here by following the Coindesk Podcast Network. Thanks for listening.
Veteran on the Move
A highlight from Bank of America Military Affairs with Lindsey Streeter
"Army veteran Lindsey Streeter leads the Military Affairs Strategy at Bank of America. He joined the Bank of America family in 2016 upon retiring from the U .S. Army as a highly decorated command sergeant major with 31 years of military service. He's been a leading voice in Bank of America's commitment to recruit, develop, and retain military talent, and Lindsey was recently named 2023 Veteran of the Year by the Military Times. Coming up next on Veteran on the Move. Welcome to Veteran on the Move. If you're a veteran in transition, an entrepreneur wannabe, or someone still stuck in that J -O -B trying to escape, this podcast is dedicated to your success. And now, your host, Joe Crane. As a member of Not -for -Profit, Navy Federal puts members at the heart of every single thing they do. Find out more at navyfederal .org. Alright, we're talking with Army veteran retired command sergeant major Lindsey Streeter, who leads the Military Affairs Strategy at Bank of America. Also, the 2023 Veteran of the Year by Military Times. Wow, what an awesome award there and great title. So, Sergeant Major Lindsey, thanks for being here today. Before we get to talk about all the great things Bank of America is doing for hiring America's veterans, take us back, tell us what you did in the Army. How many years was it, 33, 34? Hey, Joe Crane, I'll tell you what, man. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show here today. And yeah, it was just a little north of 31 years that I did. Started out as a logistician, was an Army parts guy. Spent a lot of time in aviation units, you know, chasing Black Hawk helicopters around, trying to keep them flying, and I did that for 10 years, and then I transitioned over into recruiting command where I absolutely found my niche there as an Army recruiter. Ran a couple of recruiting stations, found a lot of success running those stations, a lot of promotions that came along with that, and ascended into leadership in recruiting command, ran the Army recruiting school, ran two companies as a first sergeant, and I was tagged to go to the Sergeant Major's Academy. Came out of the academy and pinned on Command Sergeant Major and headed up to Nashville, Tennessee, to head the Nashville recruiting battalion there and part of the command team there. Did that for about three and a half years, and then the Army saw fit to bring me out into training and doctrine command to run a leadership academy to round out my career, so I served as the commandant of the NCO Academy down here at Fort Stewart, Georgia, where I retired and then smoothly transitioned over into Bank of America. Yeah, so Bank of America was your first job out of the Army? It was. It was. I had a soldier that had worked for me about nine years earlier, and he had been with the bank about a year and a half, and he called me one day. I was driving home trying to contemplate whether or not I was going to retire or take another position in the Army, a nominal position as a sergeant major, and I got a call asking me to send him a resume. I believe there's a little divine intervention at play there because I prayed a prayer for some guidance with regards to transitioning, and I got the phone call and I quickly crafted a resume and sent it in, and said he something that was profound to me. He began to talk about the company, but he knew me very well, and he said to me that you fit here at this company, and I don't believe there was any more profound of a statement that could have been said to me. I think when veterans are transitioning, they're oftentimes looking for an organization that they believe they'll go there and do good, but where do you fit? Well, within that organization, and my colleague believed that from what he knew about me and my traits of character, there'd be a perfect marriage with me coming to Bank of America, and I thank goodness that he gave me that call. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, talk about using your network. I mean, a guy I know used to work with him in the Army. He's there. He brought me in. I'm good. I mean, that's how you get a job right there, but let's face it. Most guys aren't that lucky. I mean, you know, especially nine years before you're eight, you've actually kept in touch with him, and it worked, but ultimately that's the golden goose right there. Yeah, that's the formula. I think if they know you and then they know the organization, it automatically triggers in their mind where to stop on the Rolodex when they begin to seek referrals to bring it to the company. So I was thankful that he thought of me, and he got it right. Absolutely. Now, over the years I've heard a number of things with Bank of America, and before we hit the record button, I was talking with you about, over and over we talk about transition and getting out and getting a job. A lot of us want to go into entrepreneurship, run our own business, but let's face it. Some of us, if you're the main breadwinner, you've got to go get a JOB in the meantime and work on something on the side. So transitioning and getting a job as you get out of the military is definitely something you still end up having to do even though you want to run your own show. And some folks think, oh, you're retiring. You're a member of the Paycheck of the Month Club. What stress do you have, man? You already got a check coming in, whatever. Sometimes it's harder to find a job when you're retired from the Army because you're older, you're stuck in your own ways, you've never done anything else with the Army. You're kind of boxed in, and companies are looking at you like, well, what can you do for me? You spent almost all of your adult life in the Army. It can be much more difficult to convince a company that you can still speak civilian and you're able to put on a suit and you're able to show up to work and blend in, and sometimes it is harder, you know? Yeah, Joe, you really touched on a few things that I found were a challenge, and we continue to, as we invite new talent into the company, to work on these veterans with those attributes of assimilation, as I call them, demonstrated assimilation. You know, less than 1 % of the country serves, and so we're scared when we go in, but we're absolutely horrified when it comes time to take the uniform off and to depart. And, you know, so you're entering a realm of the 99 % that did not serve, and so what you owe to them is not for them to bend to you, but for you to bend and mold and become one of them and to really demonstrate that. And I believe it begins with being humble during your interview, especially as a senior leader in transition. You know, a lot of times we want to boast about our leadership ability and leadership demonstrate capability because of our past and those things that are contained within our resume. And those companies, if you can lead, they're going to afford you an opportunity to lead, but what they want to know is can they trust you with their brand and reputation of this company? Can you get here and humble yourself enough and be vulnerable enough so that they can hang some skills on you and you can demonstrate business acumen and how to dress and how to really work in a collaborative environment that's demanded by corporate America? And so I thank goodness I had some coaching and some grooming to help me with those things, and I work for a company that spends a lot of time trying to get that right. And what we do is we've invested into the scaffolding that's required to ensure that our veterans smoothly transition. So we charged ourselves with not just joining a crowd of being veteran friendly, but we wanted to demonstrate that we're veteran ready, and we did that by, or we do that by being meticulous in our selection process up front. We want to give the veteran the best opportunity to succeed at the company, and we do that by matching up their skill sets with an opening in the company. So we want to get this right fit piece fixed from the beginning. And then we want to make sure that the living room is straight inside the house. And so we have a robust ERG in our military support and assistance group that helps us with onboarding of our veterans, and we pair them up with a more tenured and seasoned veteran, and they hold their hands for about the first 90 days that they're here just to get them through the fits and jerks of assimilation. And it's a soft space, right? It allows them to ask the stupid questions to match a pair of loafers with a belt, you know, to understand which color suit pattern that they need to wear. And so it's those sorts of things that they feel like they can feel safe and feel welcome while they're going through that transition. And what we're hopeful is that what we're seeing is that it closes the back door, and we know that because we survey them. We use employee satisfaction surveys, and we gauge the morale and the motivation of our veteran cohort that way. And so we're proud of that work that we put into those challenging times. And the other thing is that, you know, we have a problem with our resumes and bridging the gaps, bridging our skill sets. And so we know that, we understand that, and we try and take that into account when we're placing talent that those resumes may have gaps in them, that they may be missing pertinent information. And so we've invested in a veteran recruiter that helps us to look at those resumes in detail and tell the story that the veteran's resume may not be telling. Absolutely. Hold that thought. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1410: Bitcoin Will Hit $10,000,000 Per Coin - Binance CEO CZ
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis. And also I'm going to be sharing with you a 48 ,700 Bitcoin price target, pre halving according to a top analyst. Also did you know it was exactly six years ago today, China tried and failed to ban Bitcoin for the second time and ever since the Bitcoin price action is up 600 % and the mining hash rate is back at all time highs. Also quitting Max Kaiser, Bukele has restored the human rights to 7 million Salvadorians that have been taken away by murderous runts, the British and American state, a 93 % approval rating tells the story of the most popular leader in the world. And now Bukele -nomics is being copied around the world as a blueprint for freedom and justice preach. Also in today's show, Mt. Gox repayments delayed yet again. Creditors are waiting on Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash and Yen payments until next year in 2024. We'll also be discussing, according to this latest report, Coinbase currently holds 5 % of the entire Bitcoin supply in existence. That's right. While Coinbase holds 25 billion in BTC, the exchange only owns around 200 million in Bitcoin and its wallets. We'll also be discussing the catalyst, which will catapult the Bitcoin price action. According to skybridge capitals, Anthony Scaramucci will also be discussing the latest with the Binance CEO CZ setting the record straight on $250 million loan claims. That's right. The US court had recently denied an inspection plea by the SEC. I'll be breaking down this latest FUD and speaking of CZ, the Binance CEO predicts the Bitcoin price will reach $10 million per coin. In fact, a couple of years back in an interview, he said, if all of the major institutions allocate 1 % Bitcoin, we're going to see 1000 X or more growth of the Bitcoin price. And if you run the math, 1000 times today's price action is 26 to $27 million per BTC. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo what's good crypto fam. This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at crypto news alerts .net. Again, that's crypto news alerts .net and welcome everyone just joining us. This is podcast episode number 1410. I'm your host JV and today is September 23rd, 2023. So welcome to another sat stacking Saturday. Let's kick it off with our market watch as we do here each and every day, seven days a week. We can see Bitcoin back in the green trading above 26 .6 and we also have ether back in the green trading at roughly $1 ,600. The market cap is sitting at 1 .06 trillion with roughly 17 billion in volume. In the past 24 hours, we've got Bitcoin dominance at 49 .1 % and the ether dominance at 18 .2 % as Bitcoin continues outpacing Ethereum and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we've got theta lead in the pack up 7 % trading just under 64 cents followed by rocket pool up 4 % trading at $21 .63, followed by chain link up 4 % trading at $7 .18 and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week, we have WeMix leading this pack up 15%. We have PLS up 8 .2 % and XRD up 11, I mean 7 .4 % and checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated a 47, which is neutral. Yesterday was a 43 in fear, last week also a 43 and last month a 41 in fear. So there you have it. How many of you have been stacking M -Sats and taking advantage of the recent dip in dollar cost averaging? Let me know. And how many of you are anticipating Bitcoin price action to maybe dip a little further south before packing some new positions? Let me know how you feel with the current status. And also just quick reminder, we're almost at the end of September historically, September is the worst month out of the entire year for the Bitcoin price action, but it's always followed by up tober, which is historically one of the most bullish months for Bitcoin. So we only have another week until we get out of September. So we'll see how this is likely to play out. Let's break down today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Bitcoin failed to reclaim 27 ,000, though we came close. It stalled at 26 ,500 as of right now. Meanwhile, the altcoins are in no better shape with minor losses coming from most of the larger cap ones. With Chainlink, the only one with a notable price increase. So last week was expectedly less volatile, aside from the brief spike on Saturday that pushed Bitcoin then to the multi -day peak of 26 ,400. But after failing to continue upwards, Bitcoin retraced at 26 ,000 and spent the rest of the weekend there. Then Monday didn't start all that positively either, but finished the way. Bitcoin went on the offensive and soared above 27 ,000 for the first time in weeks, but then shortly dumped after. But the bulls kept the pressure on and pushed Bitcoin to a new 20 -day peak at 27 ,500 on Tuesday. The next few days were rather calm with Bitcoin maintaining 27 G's, even after the US Fed's decision to stop raising the interest rates. Yet Bitcoin's momentum disappeared by Friday as it fell to 26 ,400. It even tried to bounce off the end of the day, but failed and currently stands at 26 ,500. Its market cap is south of 520 billion, while its dominance over the alts still just inches shy of 49%. So there you have it. And as we mentioned a little earlier, the altcoins, a lot of them are also in the red with the exception of Chainlink, which seems to be outpacing the rest of the major alts. Now for a prediction from Titan of Crypto, here's what he shared on X. Bitcoin 48 ,700 before the halving rocket ship to the moon. You might want to bookmark this one. Fam, never in history the halving occurred without Bitcoin reaching the 78 .6 % Fibonacci retracement level. So first off, first cycle price reached this four months before the halving, and the second cycle it was two months before, and then on the third cycle it was 12 months before. The next halving is now roughly six months away. Bitcoin might reach the 78 .6 % Fibonacci level within this period as it currently lies at 48 ,700, but the million dollar question remains, will this time be different? So as we enter this fourth halving, let me know where you feel the Bitcoin price action is likely to hit before we have liftoff. I mean, obviously that would be a bullish scenario setting us up for a perfect price discovery in 2024 post halving. So I cannot wait. I hope the analyst is right. And if you didn't know, it was exactly six years ago. China tried and failed to ban Bitcoin for the second time because guess what? You can't ban Bitcoin. You can try. Good luck with that. And ever since the price action on the King Crypto is up 600 % and the mining hash rate continues to hit all time highs. And as you know, hash rate is a good indicator for the strength of the network, meaning the market cap is just north of only $500 billion. And as Max points out here, referring to Bukele, he has restored the human rights of 7 million Salvadorans that have been taken away by murderous runts. The British and American state, a 93 % approval rating tells the story, the most popular leader in the world. And now Bukele Nomics is being copied around the world as a blueprint for freedom and justice. Massive shout out to Najib Bukele and the people of El Salvador. Which country do you feel is likely to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender next? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments below. I feel it's going to be another Latin American country. I'd say a great candidate for that is Argentina, which has hundreds of millions of people. We have Javier Malay, the pro presidential candidate. There is a 70 % chance plus that he is elected as the president. And we already know the likelihood he could make Bitcoin a legal tender, especially being orange -pilled by Max Keiser, who is the senior Bitcoin advisor for President Bukele. As Max has already announced, he can't wait to touch down in Buenos Aires to orange pill Javier Malay. Then we also have Mexico. We have people like Ricardo Salinas, the third richest man in Mexico, very pro Bitcoin, claiming Bitcoin has been his best investment ever because, again, Max orange -pilled him back in 2014. Then we have Brazil and so many other countries that make Bitcoin a potential to become legal tender. And we all know that's going to be a game changer. And that's just another catalyst on top of the Bitcoin halving scheduled in six months in 2024, plus the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States. So can you say fireworks lays ahead? Let's go. Now let's discuss the latest more bullish news, meaning Mt. Gox is going to be delaying these payments, which means no crypto is going to be dumped onto the open market anytime soon, which again is good for the hodlers. Check it out. Now we got Nobuaki, the Mt. Gox trustee in charge of the funds owed to the exchange creditors, updated the public on September 21st, two days ago, according to the trustee, because of the lengthy discussions with specific payment providers, he could not make the October 31st deadline. That was the initial deadline, fam. And because of this reason, the repayments will start next year. And so they say, quitting him here. Therefore, with the permission of the Tokyo district court, the rehabilitation trustee changed the deadline of the base repayment, the early lump sum repayment and the intermediate repayment from October 31st, 2023 Japan time to October 31st, 2024 Japan time, respectively. By the letter of the Kobashi details, the Mt. Gox creditors waited nine years for payments. Good Lord. Currently, they're owed one hundred and forty one thousand six hundred and eighty six BTC plus one hundred and forty two thousand eight hundred and forty six Bitcoin cash and sixty nine is that billion yen. Good Lord. I'd love to know what that equates to in dollars anyways, though the delay has been extended. The creditors who have completed their claims might receive the payment by year's end, quoting them again. Rehabilitation creditors who have provided the necessary info to the rehabilitation trustee will see the payments made in a sequence as early as the end of this year, according to the letter. However, this schedule could change. Kobashi also said that due to the high volume of inquiries regarding the process, the rehabilitation team might not respond promptly. Well, that doesn't sound so promising, but I guess it's a good sign that most of this cash is not going to be dumped off any time soon, as there's a lot of FUD that's always circulating. The Mt. Gox, you know, sell off is going to crash the entire market. I think that is very unlikely and is nothing more than FUD. And again, we're gearing up for the most bullish sentiment in the four year cyclical cycle amongst us in twenty twenty four. So versus being in fear, I would be very optimistic about what's to come for the king crypto and the crypto market as a whole. But what are your thoughts, fam? Let me know in the comments right down below. Now let's discuss the largest crypto exchange in the United States. Clearly, it is Coinbase. The CEO is Brian Armstrong. But did you know, according to this latest report, they currently control and own over five percent of the Bitcoin in circulation. That's pretty hefty. And let's break this one down. And how many of you have used the Coinbase crypto exchange before? Let me know in the comments below. Here we go. Blockchain intelligence platform ARKAM recently identified the crypto exchange Coinbase holds almost one million Bitcoin in its wallets like, whoa, the coins are worth more than twenty five billion dollars at the current prices. Now, according to ARKAM, the exchanges holdings amount to almost five percent of all the existing Bitcoin. ARKAM said Coinbase holds a total of nine hundred forty seven thousand seven hundred and fifty five BTC. And at the moment, Bitcoin circulating supply is around nineteen million four hundred ninety three thousand five hundred thirty seven, according to coin info on CoinGecko. And as ARKAM shared here on X, ARKAM now identified twenty five billion of Bitcoin's Coinbase reserves with one million, approximately Bitcoin on chain. This makes Coinbase the largest Bitcoin entity in the world on ARKAM, with almost five percent of all the Bitcoin in existence, almost as much as Satoshi Nakamoto. Crazy, right? Furthermore, ARKAM noted that it has tagged and identified thirty six million Bitcoin deposits and holding addresses used by the exchange. And according to ARKAM, Coinbase's largest cold wallet holds around ten thousand BTC. And based on the exchanges financial reports, the intelligence company believes that Coinbase has more Bitcoin than are yet labeled and could not be identified. And while Coinbase holds over twenty five billion worth of Bitcoin in its wallets, the exchange only owns around ten thousand of all the Bitcoin in which it holds, which is roughly two hundred million dollars, according to the recent data. Meanwhile, community members express varying reactions to the news about the amount of Bitcoin on the centralized exchange in which they hold. Some believe it's a sign to withdraw their Bitcoin from the exchanges, warning hodlers not to wait until the exchanges start to halt withdrawals. Others say that since there are legitimate concerns over cold wallets, there is no good way to store your assets. I'd like to chime in real quick. Obviously, if it's not your keys, it's not your coins. So while a custodian such as Coinbase can hold your crypto, you've got to also note that it's not yours. So if something were to happen, hypothetically, like we've seen with FTX and the collapse last year, then not your keys, not your coins, they don't belong to you at the end of the day. So you've got to start to weigh the risk reward with having a custodian such as Coinbase or a centralized exchange hold your coins versus taking the responsibility for yourself and learning how to self custody your own crypto and call storage such as with a Bitcoin cold wallet, such as a treasure. So I just wanted to point that out. There's no right or wrong way to hold your crypto. You've got to do what's in your best interest, of course. So, you know, I mean, just want to keep it real at the end of the day. So check it when it comes to Bitcoin ownership by companies, business intelligence for MicroStrategy still owns most Bitcoin. I believe it's over one hundred and fifty two thousand eight hundred BTC, to be exact, worth over four billion dollars at the time of this recording, making them the largest publicly traded company to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Now, another major company that controls over six hundred thousand BTC is Grayscale in their GBTC product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which they just recently had a lawsuit against the SEC with the plan to convert their trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF. So considering they already control the underlying asset in the sum of over six hundred thousand BTC makes them a pretty strong contender. Wouldn't you agree? Let me know your thoughts, fam. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the Bitcoin price likely to catapult along with the altcoin to coin to SkyBridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci. Let's break this down. Shout out to the Mooch, SkyBridge Capital founder Scaramucci is detailing how one catalyst could have a bullish impact on Bitcoin, as well as the alt. In an interview with the Wolf of Wall Street, Scott Melker Scaramucci says that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, which seems to be a ninety five percent likelihood, according to top ETF analyst at Bloomberg, Eric Balchunes. So according to SkyBridge Capital founder, the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF and the Bitcoin halving, which is expected to occur in April of twenty twenty four, could combine to ignite a crypto bull market. No, it's not. It could combine. It will combine. Just saying. Quitting him here as Wall Street or products on Wall Street are sold, they are not bought. And so there is going to be tens of thousands, if not one hundred thousand plus people at these Wall Street firms selling these products to their traditional investors. So people that are in Bitcoin understand the finite supply of Bitcoin, right? We all know there's a finite limited supply, 21 million, and they understand the nature and the quality the Bitcoin has. This will push Bitcoin up. Of course, it will have a dramatically positive effect on the altcoin market because it will lead to more capital into digital properties so people can think whatever they want. They can think short term about the near term volatility of Bitcoin. But these macro positive factors are overwhelming. And according to Scaramucci, the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF filed by giant asset managers such as BlackRock, who controls over 10 trillion in assets under management and Fidelity, that controls over four and a half trillion in assets under management, can see Bitcoin increasing its market cap by roughly 24 times from the current level. We'll send it. Let's go quoting the Mooch here. It is important that now the largest asset manager in the world who started out with some level of skepticism related to digital assets and Bitcoin is now willing to adopt Bitcoin. I mean, I guess they mean BlackRock is willing to adopt Bitcoin, but even more important than that, they're willing to explain to their clients. I think BlackRock now has 13 trillion dollars in assets under management. So for them, seven trillion for Fidelity. While these numbers are higher than I even imagine, while their clients need exposure to digital property like Bitcoin. And so we have a five hundred billion dollar plus market for Bitcoin. So you and I know gold is at 12 trillion ish, depending on where it's trading. But yes, 12 trillion. There is no reason why Bitcoin couldn't get gold. So there you have it. And to watch this video interview he did with Scott Melker entitled 37000 Bitcoin. Can it skyrocket 35 percent? Check the show notes below the video in the description. And I think we all could agree it's only a matter of time before Bitcoin returns to price discovery mode, virtually meaning entering new all time highs. My personal prediction is sometime in 2024, considering the two biggest catalysts, which we just covered, the Bitcoin halving and Bitcoin ETF approval, which we know is going to be a given, especially considering the SEC is not going to be able to push it back and push back that deadline any longer because, you know, they just they have been pushing it back now for 10 years while they continue to approve futures ETFs, which can allow them to spoof and manipulate the market, which is all by design. At the end of the day, there's not new under the sun and three things cannot be long hidden. The sun, the moon and the truth. But just saying. Anyways, fam, now let's discuss the ongoing fight against CZ, the finance CEO with this 250 million dollar loan. And then I'll be breaking down his 10 million dollar price prediction and in fact sharing a transcription of him claiming that Bitcoin can thousand X from the current price, which would ultimately mean not 10 million, but we're talking twenty six to twenty seven million dollars per coin. Let's break this down. So here we go. First, with the FUD, the Binance CEO, CZ Shangping Zhao had refuted a recent report alleging that he received the 250 million dollar loan from BAM Management, the company that serves as the holding entity for Binance US. Now, how many of you have used Binance US or Binance before as the exchange? Let me know, fam. The development comes amidst Binance's struggles with plunging trading volume as the world's largest crypto exchange faces mounting lawsuits and increased scrutiny, regulatory which seems to all be by design by the SEC and the regulators. Right. The report published by Decrypt September 19th drew its conclusions from court documents associated with the ongoing lawsuit involving Binance and the United States. SEC, according to the news agency's interpretation, the Binance US legal representatives asserted in the documents that BAM Management US Holdings had issued a quarter billion dollar convertible note to CZ back in December. CZ, however, challenged the accuracy of the report when he tweeted the following. The amount of wrong information is just they got the direction wrong. I loaned 250 million dollars to BAM a while back, not the other way around, and have not taken it back. The Binance CEO clarified that the loan arrangement was, in fact, the opposite of what was reported in the post. The exec explained that he had extended a 250 million dollar loan to BAM Management and asserted that he had not yet received the payment. So there's nothing new under the sun. Just more FUD, it seems like, fam. The legal battle has taken a toll on Binance US, which saw a flurry of employee departures. The US SEC alleged that Binance was not cooperating in the ongoing probe and even claimed that BAM refused to make essential witnesses available for deposition. Concerns were also raised on CEFFU, which happens to be a custody service offered by Binance's international arm, Binance Holdings Ltd. The SEC's filing claimed that the platform appeared to be in violation of a previous agreement designed to prevent the transfer of the assets abroad. And despite the scathing attacks by the financial regulator, Binance scored a small win this week. The SEC's motion to approve an inspection into Binance US was denied by the USDC District Judge, Zia Farokhia. So there you have it. I mean, the ongoing FUD will more than likely continue, as obviously Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world and regulators seem to have a problem with them and want to go after them for whatever apparent reason. So, like I said, hopefully in the end, you know, truth is revealed and the real story versus all the FUD and, you know, the manipulation of the price action and all the shenanigans we continue to witness in the market. And with that being shared, now let's dive into the Binance CEO, CZ and his 10 million dollar price prediction, as well as him predicting that Bitcoin price action could even a thousand X from here, sending the Bitcoin price parabolic to 26 or even 27 million dollars per coin. Let's break this baby down, shall we? Here we go. JV, have you ever heard of him? A crypto YouTube influencer from Crypto News Alerts remembered CZ's prediction. You're damn right I did. The Bitcoin would reach 10 million per coin. JV referred to the statement in a recent video uploaded on YouTube where he analyzes various aspects of the Bitcoin market development. Now, JV looked back at CZ's Bitcoin prediction while analyzing the Bitcoin CEO's recent Twitter comments. And in a Q &A session on July 5th, CZ addressed several issues, including Binance's reaction to the ongoing regulatory scrutiny. He also spoke about the rising interest of institutional investors in crypto currencies, as well as the proposed BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF. CZ made the 10 million dollar price prediction back in 2021. In fact, I have the article already pulled up and I'm going to be reading word for word what he shared. Following MicroStrategy's announcement, allocating Bitcoin for the corporate strategy, CZ based his analysis on the possibility of several corporate companies, major institutions across the world, allocating just one percent of their corporate treasury into Bitcoin. And according to CZ, that would lead to a thousand X growth in the value of BTC. JV highlighted CZ's welcoming approach to institutional investors in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and CZ noted that advantages in traditional finance firms they bring to the crypto industry, despite concerns about their intentions clashing with Bitcoin's decentralized nature. And according to JV, CZ identified two key factors driving Binance's strategy for the next 18 months. They include the upcoming Bitcoin halving event now less than six months out, as well as, you know, we could be seeing a Bitcoin ETF here in the near future. The Bitcoin community expects the next halving to occur in April of 2024. Now quoting CZ word for word from the initial interview he made on Bloomberg Radio predicting a potential 1000 X increase in the Bitcoin price action. So here's what he had to say. Right now, I think only 11 companies again, this is right around the time that MicroStrategy announced putting Bitcoin on its balance sheet. They announced having allocating some talking about Bitcoin, like usually less than one percent of their corporate treasury to Bitcoin. And we think that it is most likely what caused the initial price rise. I think MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor started it first, but there are six hundred and fifty thousand companies in the world, like relatively established companies in the world, and their treasury is huge. Preach. So if all of them talking about these major institutions only allocated just one percent to Bitcoin, we are going to see, I don't know, 1000 X more growth in the Bitcoin price. And if they allocate more than one percent, then it's going to be even bigger. So I think people don't quite get the magnitude of the wave that is about to hit us. Now, let's run that math one more time. Fam, today's price is roughly twenty six thousand five hundred times that by one thousand. He's talking about a twenty six and a half million dollar Bitcoin price action. The potential if they only put one percent of their strategic reserves into Bitcoin, you do the math. If it's five X and five percent, what are we talking? One hundred and twenty million dollar Bitcoin price. Just saying this is coming from CZ, the world's richest man in crypto. So very powerful words indeed. Let's get back to this prediction of what he shared. So the finance CEO estimates that the flagship crypto can go up anywhere from nineteen hundred percent to twenty thousand percent from the current price levels from the time he made the prediction. And he goes on to share with price predictions. It is really, really difficult. I think it can go to, I don't know, one million dollars, ten million dollars. It is very hard to tell. And again, if we literally did a thousand X from today's price, we're talking twenty six and a half million per BTZ. So CZ also reveals that the exchange is onboarding new users as an at an unprecedented sustained rate during the bull run, outpacing its user growth during the twenty seventeen bull run. So again, this was during the twenty twenty one bull run. Here's what he had to share. Just to give people the idea, in twenty seventeen, when Bitcoin hit the peak of about 20 G's, we were seeing three hundred thousand new registered users per day. And that only happened for a couple of days. And that kind of trailed off and became slower. Now we're seeing sustained new user registrations above the peak and sustained like for over two to three months. So could you imagine running the world's largest crypto exchange and having over three hundred thousand new registered users every single day for like 90 days straight? That is insanity. And that's the previous market. I think twenty twenty four is likely going to outpace the previous market as Bitcoin becomes a common household name and as Bitcoin game theory continues in full effect. You have presidential candidates making Bitcoin a big determining factor. We have people like Ron DeSantis, Kennedy Jr., Javier Malay over in Argentina. So naturally, it's just going to create more commotion and positive catalysts for Bitcoin as we move forward into twenty twenty four. So, I mean, fireworks are ahead. Let me know how you feel. We're likely to finish out this year by December of twenty twenty three. Where do you feel the Bitcoin price action is likely to be? And don't forget to check out CryptoNewsAlerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Could Oil and a Gov't Shutdown Screw Up Powell's Plans?
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, September 22nd, and today we are talking oil, macro, everything that could throw the economy off. But before we get to that, 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 at the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, well, we are sort of continuing the macro story today that we picked up around Powell and the FOMC this week. And one of the questions that Powell was asked was about risks that threatened to knock the economy off course. Two that he mentioned that we're going to spend a little time on today include oil prices and a potential government shutdown. Let's start with oil first. The price of crude oil has steadily increased over the past four months. From a low of around $70 in June, oil reached almost $90 a barrel for the US -based WTI benchmark contract and $95 per barrel and $95 per barrel for international Brent crude earlier this week. The price increase for crude has driven US gas prices back above $3 .80 per gallon, the highest level since last October. Overall, gas prices have ramped up by 20 % since the beginning of the year, according to AAA. Now, there are a number of factors all contributing to steadily increasing oil prices since the June lows. The first is OPEC+. The economic group of oil producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia have recently curbed output. Production cuts, which were agreed to late last year, have been gradually implemented over the past six months. In July, Saudi Arabia voluntarily cut an additional 1 million barrels per day from its production quota, about 10 % of its previous output. Existing production cuts across OPEC have already been extended into next year and analysts expect Saudi Arabia to extend their voluntary cuts until March. On Thursday, Russia further constrained supply by banning the export of diesel and petrol. Russia is one of the world's largest suppliers of diesel alongside their status as producing around 12 % of the global supply of crude oil. The International Energy Agency said last year that Russian refineries produce, quote, roughly double the diesel needed to satisfy domestic demand and typically export half their annual production. Analyst opinions focused on the simplest explanation for the ban, retaliation for sanctions. Henning Gloestien of the Eurasia Group said, Russia wants to inflict pain on Europe and the U .S. and it looks like they're now repeating the playbook from gas and the oil market ahead of the winter months. They're showing that they're not finished using their power over energy markets. The Kremlin said the ban was temporary and aimed at addressing rising energy prices in domestic markets. However, they gave no timeline on when the ban might be lifted. U .S. and European policymakers have largely banned the importation of Russian refined fuel since February, which has required Russian supply to be routed through third party regions including Turkey, North Africa and Latin America. Now, OPEC cuts over the past year were predicated on a weakening demand profile heading into this year. At the time they were announced, recessions were expected across Europe and the U .S. China was an open question with the potential of reopening pushed back in the midst of additional pandemic waves. But since then, the European economy is sputtering along, albeit with dismal manufacturing data out of Germany. The sanctioning of Russian supply has caused European demand to be displaced to other regions with refining capacity, largely India and the Middle East. In the U .S., recession has been continuously pushed off into the future and oil demand is now back at all time highs with no signs of slowing. Although the Chinese economy has hit some turbulence recently, oil demand remains robust. Analysts expect China's oil demand to remain high as Beijing secures strategically important resources. What's more, analysts expect China's oil demand to remain high as Beijing secures strategically important resources in part to mitigate geopolitical risks as well as to shore up its manufacturing and transportation industries. So with oil prices spiking, many are wondering whether the White House will once again intervene in markets using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Between November 2021 and September of last year, the White House authorized a number of SPR releases. The final policy saw one million barrels per day provided into the market over six months. A small amount of oil was restocked earlier this year, but the SPR still sits at a little over half its pre -pandemic level. Earlier this week, a headline circulated proclaiming that quote, Biden says depleting SPR is on the table. This was later found to be a hoax with no legitimate source, but it demonstrates how difficult high oil prices could be for the U .S. economy heading into election season. To wit, many saw the SPR release as a political decision rather than an economic decision heading into the 2022 midterms. In the private sector, U .S. oil inventories have recently hit 40 -year lows of 46 -day supply, well below the longer -term average of 65 days. And while August's inflation reports already showed a small uptick due to oil -related prices, the effect is expected to be more profound across this month. Dario Perkins, an economist at T .S. Lombard said, That said, it is important to keep these recent inflationary developments in context. We are not yet in danger of undoing 12 months of solid disinflationary progress, not even close. Others suggested that high oil prices would have a greater impact on growth rather than inflation. Maya Bhandari, head of multi -asset at BNP Paribas Asset Management said, It really impacts the growth side of the Goldilocks equation rather than the inflation side of things over the long term. Theory is that sustained high oil prices begin to eat into disposable income for households alongside higher costs of production for manufacturing and logistics. These combine to reduce growth and potentially tip the economy into recession. Overall, this situation in the oil markets has, to some, many parallels to the liquid natural gas spike in the winter of 2022. Prices in some markets rose more than tenfold, European energy companies scrambled to secure supply at any cost, and multiple firms went bankrupt due to the volatility in markets. This week, Bloomberg reported that the trading arm of French supplier Total Energies has played a major role in bidding up the price of U .S.-based oil. Their source claimed that the firm is paying a premium for physical U .S. barrels, pushing the spread against futures to levels not seen since last November. With all of that said, there are some signs that the oil market is beginning to cool off. On Thursday, Brent crude futures fell to $92 per barrel, which represented the third straight day of price declines, which is the longest streak in almost a month. Warren Patterson, head of Commodity Strategy at ING, said the Fed's hawkish messaging has quote, put some pressure on risk assets, including oil. The dollar index has risen by 0 .8 % since Chair Powell left the podium, a large enough move to weigh on asset markets. Patterson said he still expects Brent crude to move above the $100 mark in the near term, but that he doesn't anticipate the move will be sustainable. So that is the view on oil overall. The thing that I am definitely going to be watching more than anything else is the political dimension of this. We are now entering the period where everything, even more than usual, is going to be completely wrapped up in what it means for the election season. If prices at the pump keep trending up, it seems very likely that the Biden administration will be willing to do what it takes, including SPR releases, to get those prices down. But that's just something we're going to have to keep an eye on. Now what about that other factor that Powell mentioned? Well yes, indeed, my friends, the US government is once again hurtling towards a shutdown after efforts to pass a short term spending bill were scuttled on the House floor on Thursday. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to marshal Republicans to vote through a package to keep the government funded past the end of September. Closed door negotiations continued late into Wednesday night, but were apparently unconvincing. The bill currently being considered is the $886 billion Defense Appropriations Act. The bill was stifled in the House after five GOP representatives refused to allow debate to begin by voting against a preliminary procedural rule. Democrats also voted against the measure and appeared to taunt Republicans apparently reveling in seeing the GOP's slim majority descend into chaos. Among the Republican dissenters was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who opposed the inclusion of $300 million in funding to the Ukrainian war effort. On Thursday, Politico reported that Pentagon sources have said Ukrainian operations have been exempted from any shutdown, making that part of the dispute rather moot. McCarthy sent House members home on Thursday night to return to Washington on Tuesday. He told reporters after the failed vote, quote, two people flipped, so I got to figure out how to fix that. That wasn't the impression they had given us. Now, this was McCarthy's third attempt at bringing the bill to the House floor. The current proposal on the table is a 31 -day stopgap funding mechanism to forestall a shutdown to begin next weekend. McCarthy remarked on the change in tone in Congress among that extreme element of the Republican Party, stating that, quote, this is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. Now, even if a 31 -day stopgap is passed in the House, it seems unlikely to make its way through the Democrat -controlled Senate. The bill includes a 30 percent temporary cut to domestic agencies and immigration law changes, neither of which are likely to get the seal of approval from Dems. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said instead of decreasing the chance of a shutdown, Speaker McCarthy is actually increasing it by wasting time on extremist proposals that cannot become law in the Senate. House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries remarked that the situation was playing out as a, quote, Republican civil war. Now, if it comes to pass, this would be the 11th government shutdown since 1980. The logic is that hard -line positions that don't enjoy support in the Congress can be put directly to the American people by shutting down the government and drawing attention to the impasse. Republican Ralph Norman said last week that, quote, we're going to have a shutdown. We believe in what we're doing. The jury will be the country. Still, the record on government shutdowns doesn't really support that strategy. Not one of the 10 previous shutdowns resulted in the dissenting group extracting concessions. Typically, the American people quickly turn on the party they view as blocking access to government services over a petty squabble. Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, said, This is such a dumb fight because there's no principle that we're standing on here. It's just bad tactics. While the dispute is nominally over excessive government spending, with Republican dissenters pushing for funding to be reduced back to 2022 levels, the underlying problem is, of course, the level of discord within the Republican Party. McCarthy was voted in as House Speaker after a record 15 attempts. The process took four days and frequently descended into a farce. This was only the second time in the post -Civil War era that a House Speaker had failed to be elected on the first attempt. Conant noted the terrible optics of a government shutdown of the Republicans' own making heading into election season, stating that, quote, Biden didn't win because of his political skills and soaring oratory. He won because Republicans blew themselves up with Trump. I'm afraid we're seeing history repeat itself, with the GOP once again helping Biden by shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, never one to shy away from controversy, Trump fanned the flames on Wednesday, posting that, quote, Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden's weaponized government that refuses to close the border and treats half the country as enemies of the state. He added that, quote, This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other patriots. They failed on the debt limit they must not fail now. Use the power of the person to defend the country. Now, zooming out and trying to get away from the politics of the situation, which obviously is not the focus of this show. The reason that this was brought up at last week's FOMC press conference is that a government shutdown would halt the publication of government data. This would include employment, inflation and growth statistics, which are currently playing a key role in guiding Fed policy. Now, given how much the Fed has said over and over again, their policy is going to be driven by data, presumably not having access to that data would be a fairly big deal. Yet in spite of that, Powell tried to put on a brave face, saying, If there is a government shutdown and it lasts through the next meeting, then it's possible we wouldn't be getting some of the data that we would ordinarily get and we would just have to deal with that. Now, by way of some history, the longest ever government shutdown lasted 35 days. The dispute was around funding for the border wall and quickly turned public sentiment against the Trump administration. Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, but the administration failed to convince their own party to fund the wall. At the time, Democrat Senator Jon Tester called it the most stupid shutdown I have ever seen in my life. However, if this week's display is anything to go by, that 2019 shutdown could soon have some competition for that title. Now, what does this all have to do with the crypto sphere? Well, I think in many ways these are just exemplary of the state of politics in general. And given that, perhaps it's not surprising that former Senator Pat Toomey is not optimistic about the chances of crypto legislation being passed during this Congress. Just prior to retiring from Congress at the beginning of the year, Toomey introduced his own crypto bill, which focused on stablecoin regulations. Now, the House currently has two major crypto bills eligible to be brought for a vote. One would establish a stablecoin framework while the other introduces more broad crypto regulations. While speaking at a Georgetown Law Seminar on Thursday, however, Toomey said, I don't see a path forward in the Senate regardless of how the vote goes in the House. He added that of the two, he sees the stablecoin legislation as having the best shot. The sticking point will likely be Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown. While Brown has been outspoken about the risks of crypto and the need to bring the industry to heel, he has so far remained extremely quiet on exactly what form of legislation would meet his approval. And of course, any crypto legislation would need the support of Democratic senators to pass a vote to become law. Still, during an interview on Thursday, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said that she thinks that Brown's lack of commitment to a legislative position might actually be a good thing. Shirzad said, Now, last week, Brown wrote a letter to head regulators at multiple agencies urging them to use their existing powers to crack down on non -compliant crypto firms. This of course seems to be the clear intention, at least at the SEC. On Tuesday, the head of that agency's crypto assets and cyber unit, David Hirsch, warned that more enforcement actions would be coming against crypto intermediaries, including DeFi protocols. Still, Toomey, who serves now as an advisor to Coinbase, views stablecoin legislation as the solvable problem. At the moment, Democrats are pushing for the Fed to serve a central role in regulating issuers rather than granting oversight power to state regulators. This preference is believed to be driven by the White House. Toomey said, He thinks that senior Democrats will get on board once the White House is satisfied with the stablecoin proposal. Although that proposal might have to wait until after the election, as Toomey said in the next Congress, I think it's quite possible to get something done.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Robert Kiyosaki: Buy Bitcoin NOW, Before Market Crash | EP 828
"Yo, welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live, we're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution, we cover breaking news, culture, and medic warfare, we will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Robert Kiyosaki, he is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, it was one of the most influential books that I read in my professional career, in fact it was one of the first books that I read in my late teens, early 20s, I dropped out of college so I took the non -normal path, the path where my parents are like, you're never going to make anything of yourself, and that book was a big inspiration for me, it motivated me and it really kind of changed on my mindset what is money, what is entrepreneurship, what is wealth, so I highly recommend that book if you haven't read it, and the reason I'm talking about this individual today is because he's pretty base, he likes Bitcoin, he likes Bitcoin a lot, and he tweeted something, something actually that he's been tweeting for quite a while, and essentially what he's saying is, you better get yourself some gold, you better get yourself some silver, obviously I don't agree with the gold and the silver, it's not that gold in itself is bad, I just think that the gold market is captured because of gold centralization, because of its physical characteristics it leads to a lot of people cussing their gold, and I think that inevitably leads to rehypothecation, that inevitably leads to manipulation. So, yeah, I think Bitcoin is the insurance, but most importantly, if this news was just on itself, you would say, Niko, this is a bunch of noise, what does it matter if another person is saying to buy Bitcoin? Well you guys know the deal, what we do here at Simply Bitcoin, connect the dots, remember all the people that are saying, buy Bitcoin, the other day I think it was yesterday's episode, you had Jordan Peterson, so you have another influencer, you have another person who has a huge following, who's the author of a very, very famous book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, it's a very influential book, also saying the quiet part out loud, buy Bitcoin as insurance, get on the life raft, so that is awesome, we're gonna talk about that today, and also in the European Union, European Union passed DAC8, and essentially what that would do is it would force crypto service providers to report all transaction information on EU clients, which is something very, very similar to the Elizabeth Warren bill that we covered on yesterday's episode, so yeah, we covered Jordan Peterson on Monday, we covered the Elizabeth Warren stuff yesterday, so you could see where all these countries, the direction that all these countries are heading, as the separation of money and state accelerates, and the nation state tries to maintain that privilege, the privilege, the control of money, the monopoly over money, but I don't think you can stop an idea whose time has come, so they're gonna have a very, very hard time stopping that, I'm very excited for today's show, it's Wednesday, we're halfway through the week, it's time to bring up my legendary co -host, who is literally smiling and laughing, this is Ati all the time, how you doing brother, what's up? I'm doing great, I'm just laughing at you, because like hey, you know, I was joking before the show, I was like okay, let's just get the show done, and you're like, I live for this stuff, this is what I do, and it still works, but we love to do this man, and yeah, to your point, you know, I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, my early days right before I found Bitcoin, and it was definitely one of those defining books in my life that, you know, I think I've come a long way since then, but it was one of those books that definitely got me reading, or at least thinking about money correctly, anyways, on that point, last week we had a kneel on, and someone asked, what are some of the Bitcoin fundamentals, and so I went on my Noster yesterday, and I asked people what they thought are some Bitcoin fundamentals, and shout out to Darth Coin, our simply Bitcoin Telegram group moderator, and he gave me one of his articles, so I'm gonna use that as a jump off point, so hopefully some new people that are in the chat, I saw someone say they just got their first, you know, their first Bitcoin, they just started stacking, so you know, we're new people in the Simply Bitcoin YouTube that maybe aren't as familiar with everything that we know, we're trying to get them on board, you know, I know you guys, I can hear you guys saying, you know, Opti repeats himself so much, but hey, we're trying to get everyone on the same page, not everyone understands as much as you do, and as I jokingly say all the time, I think I've forgotten more about Bitcoin than I remember, but all you need to remember is, stack sad, stay humble, stay solvent, take your Bitcoin off the exchange, keep it simple guys, so we're gonna kind of get back to some fundamentals, give you guys some, as Darth Coin says, some Bitcoin commandments, and we'll kind of have a little chat about that, I'd like to get, or pick Niko's brain about what he thinks are some of the fundamentals as well, so we got a good show, I think actually it's gonna be a fitting show with the Robert Kiyosaki news as well. Robert Kiyosaki man, it's absolute legend, love, love his work, love the book that he wrote, also guys if you're enjoying the show, help us break 100 likes within the first hour, I think yesterday, or the day before, we broke 200 likes, so if you're watching the live stream right now on Rumble, YouTube, Twitter, make sure to smash that like button, also join Simply Bitcoin's Telegram group, it's absolutely free, we're almost, we're about to hit a thousand people in there, so just go to t .me slash simply Bitcoin TV, join it, it's a party, you can tag Opti there with some memes and he'll feature them on the show. Alright everybody, no more delay, let's jump straight into the numbers, we got a lot to talk about today, let's check it out. The Bitcoin Numbers Is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped Seeds Do It Yourself Kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates, instead of just writing them on paper, don't store your generational wealth on paper, paper is prone to water damage, fire damage, you wanna put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet earth, titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer, and these letter stamps, and once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere, no risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamped seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire, they're also crush proof, waterproof, non -corrosive, and time proof, all things that paper is not, allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul. Stamp your seed on stamp seed. Alright guys, I literally made it easy for you guys, scan the QR code on your screen with your phone, it will take you directly to the stamp seed website, you can use promo code simply to get 15 % off anything on the stamp seed website, store your generational wealth on fucking titanium bro, titanium. Anyways, the Bitcoin price at the recording is 27 ,155, sats per dollar, 3 ,683, block height 808 ,601, blocks to halving 31 ,399, halving estimate April 21st, 2024, total lightning network capacity 4 ,829 Bitcoin, capacity value 131 million US dollars, realized monetary inflation rate, inflation 1 .75%, continuing to take fiat currencies to absolute school, market capitalization, 529 billion dollars with a B, Bitcoin versus gold market cap 4 .09%. In the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin is still a tiny little baby. Anyways, something to point out, something very interesting, which is the Bitcoin versus gold market cap. That will continue to go up if Bitcoin reaches the gold market cap, that is 500 million dollars sorry yes, 500 ,000 dollars per Bitcoin, rough estimate. So and we all know that Bitcoin is better than gold because of its physical characteristics. Again I know a lot of people that like gold in the chat and I appreciate you all and I'm a fan of gold too, gold bar like physical gold I'm a big fan of but problem is that most people don't like they don't they don't buy physical gold, they buy paper gold. That's the issue right? With Bitcoin you know it allows you to take self custody of your Bitcoin extremely easy, you know you don't have you don't have to wait for it to get physically mailed to you. If you go to El Salvador where Bitcoin is legal tender and you go to a McDonald's you know you could pay with your Bitcoin because Bitcoin has a bunch of decimal places you know it's divisible it's goes through the internet if you use lightning network it's instantaneous you know the main chain writes roughly 10 minutes settlement but you'll still see the transaction immediately.
Discerning Hearts - Catholic Podcasts
A highlight from BTP-WP9 Chap 31 -34 Prayer of Quiet and the Real Presence of Christ the Eucharist- The Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Avila Beginning to Pray w/Dr. Anthony Lilles
"I think sometimes we fall into traps where I'm moving in levels. I'm walking just up the steps of a ladder or a staircase, and I've moved from recollection, I'm now in the prayer of quiet, and I'm not going to go back, but it's not quite like that, is it? I mean, even as she describes it. No, that's the idea of it being a spark is you have this prayer for a moment, and then you go back to your prayer of recollection. And then, you know, slowly or gradually, the prayer of quiet might come more frequently in your life and might last with you a little bit longer, and when it does, it produces more and more good things. This kind of prayer is a gift. You can't force God to do it, and you can't just will yourself into it. What you can do is be ready for it, to welcome it, to receive it, to thank God for it when you are given it. This is a gift, you know, like every good gift, how you treat this gift is how you treat the giver. So if you're selfishly grasping for it, you're not really treating the giver very well. You need to wait until the giver wants to give it to you, or to slough it off and not appreciate what God has done. This also is not to appreciate the gift that God would have for us either. It's that gracious welcoming of this gift, this readiness to respond to what God wants to do in our hearts that expresses the gratitude, the hospitality, if you will, that this prayer needs if it's to be fruitful in our lives, if we are to grow in it more. So what you're saying is right. It's not that you'll never go back to the prayer of recollection or vocal prayer. In fact, this whole book, The Way of Perfection, is about teaching vocal prayer, and what she's saying is that there's a relationship between the most humble vocal petition, those petitions given us in the Our Father, and the most lofty kind of mystical union with God, that these aren't two opposed things. You never really have to abandon one to find the other. One into leads the other, and so while you're experiencing the other, you might not finish the Our Father because you got caught up in prayer, surrender to that grace, it's beautiful, but then as the spark kind of seems to disappear because it's already done the good fruit it's supposed to do, and you recall where you are in the Our Father, just pick up where you left off and continue in the prayer. If God wants to give you another spark, you will, and if he doesn't, it's up to him. He's sovereign. Our job is to simply receive the gift when he gives it, and to appreciate the gift as it's poured out in our hearts. The prayer of quiet, then, is that part of that experience of contemplation that she distinguishes about, because for someone who might be trying to enter into this in an experience, for example, as St. Ignatius would teach about meditation and contemplation, it's a different understanding for the Carmelite understanding of contemplation than it is maybe in the way that Ignatius spoke of it. Well, Ignatian contemplation involves spiritual exercises and really is about the sanctification of the imagination, very, very important effort, and Teresa's not unaware of it, in fact, she refers to it in these teachings, so she's not unaware of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, but when she speaks of the prayer of quiet, she is speaking of something not so much that we do, where the Ignatian exercises, for example, are a method of prayer we call interior composition of place, and that is where you use your imagination to put yourself in a scripture passage, and so you hear Jesus' voice with your ears, and you feel with your sense of touch, the wetness or the dryness of the occasion, and what smells are there, and so in plunging your whole imagination into this biblical scene, you are making yourself present to the Lord, there are gifts of grace that are given as you invest yourself this way, as you explore the things you feel while you're in the presence of Jesus, as you explore what you believe Jesus may be feeling as he encounters you, what Jesus sees with his resurrected eyes when he looks out on people, what people see when they yearn for him to touch them. This plunge of the imagination, allowing it to be baptized in divine revelation is a powerful form of prayer, and it leads to this prayer of recollection that Teresa is talking about, and it can even dispose, because it leads to recollection, it even disposes to this prayer of quiet, so it's not that somebody who practices a nation prayer never knows this prayer of quiet, but she's going to describe something now that St. Ignatius doesn't necessarily describe, it's not that he doesn't believe it doesn't exist, the whole purpose of the Ignatian exercises in a certain way is to help lead souls into this prayer of quiet, into this contemplative prayer, and in fact, in the very beginning of the exercises, he says that the exercises that he proposes are just some of the many exercises that a soul might engage in while they're on retreat, and they're only being offered, he's only offering them insofar as it helps lead the soul into a deeper encounter with God. The prayer of quiet is the beginning of this deeper encounter, and so there's a way in which the descriptions and the rules of discernment that St. Ignatius offers leads to the descriptions that Teresa picks up on here, and so one leads into the other, so those who've invested themselves deeply in the Ignatian exercises probably have had all the experiences that St. Teresa of Avila is describing. It's just in her charism, she's going to put the emphasis more on this encounter with the Lord that our spiritual exercises dispose us to, and what happens to a soul as it invests in this, she's going to look at that more and more, especially around starting here chapter 30 -31 to the end of her book, these last 12 chapters, it's going to be all about what God does in us and how we should respond to that rather than spiritual exercises or techniques that we should take up. She's using the most simple technique of all to get us there, the technique of the vocal prayer that Jesus taught us to say, you know, and she's, but the reason why this very simple vocal prayer can take us to these spiritual heights is because as she understands this prayer, this prayer is something that involves our mind and our intellect and composition of place, if you will. All of this is what recollection is, but once you're recollected, she's saying, now there's space in your soul for something more. In other words, it's not what our own efforts or techniques can achieve in prayer. It's not the state of consciousness that we are able to accomplish that is the greatest thing that Christian prayer has to offer. It's this other contemplative prayer, this prayer where God is working, where God is doing something that is the most powerful and most beautiful thing that God wants to accomplish. So what is occurring in chapter 30 that helps us to transition to that moment? In these chapters, she's beginning to think her contemplation has gone from our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And now she's starting to reflect on these words, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The prayer of quiet comes at the will of God. There's our will and then there's God's will. God's will will be done in us when and how it wants. And so there's nothing we can do to accomplish this prayer of quiet. We can dispose ourselves to it, but it's up to God to do when he wants to do it, how he wants to do it, the way he wants to do it. It's up to him completely. So this kind of prayer then, we can't accomplish it by our own industry or cleverness or perseverance. But what we can do is be surrendered to it. We can be ready to welcome it. And so she offers some descriptions of it so that you can recognize what it is. One of the descriptions she offers is the description of Simeon recognizing Jesus in the temple. An excerpt from chapter 31 of the Way of Perfection by St. Teresa of Avila.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Right, yeah. And the female dog is on heat. Every single dog in the community comes to a house to try to win her over whoever gets here gets to have intercourse with her, right? That's with the dog species, right? The same with the cat. And it's even consistent with all of the animal kingdom. Yes, but look at the lion and the lioness. Right. Look at even the whale, the dog thing. The animal kingdom. That's right. And also animals, according to science, where animals are mammals. So we cannot basically be going contrary to that. But we digress. Yeah, that's a little science education. Right. So sometimes you're going to hear it. Please don't logo. Listen, we're back. Right. All right. All right. So yeah, over to you, Tracy. Yeah, with that out of the way, I started to think about it. So as I stated in the previous podcast episode, if you listen to it, I'm the type of person that I would love to sit down and marinate on certain things. So I remember when the whole trend of you got to shoot your shot and like men were like encouraging women to like men were encouraging women to also shoot their shots. And I was like thinking about is that I wonder what the word says when it comes like shooting your shot as a like, what does the word see? How does the Bible is guiding us? So what does the Bible see with regards to this? So I decided to flip my pages. I love if you don't know, I love to look for information. I love to look for knowledge. I decided to flip my pages and I found out. So in Genesis, let's start from Genesis. So in Genesis is decreasing, right? Yeah. Man is created. Woman is created. Woman is placed in the garden. And she's placed in front of men. She's not even a little man, but she's just please in front of men. Yeah. And man chooses woman. Yeah. So that's the first sign of Percy we see. Man chooses woman. Please tell us the words because I love those words. What does he say when he beholds the beauty? Okay. This is what he says. This is the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh. Okay. Right. That's how he recognized you. Exactly. So we see the first case of Percy. Man says, see, this is the woman that I want. And so he chooses him. They are the only ones in the garden and he still chooses him. So we see that first case. Again, if this is more like solid information for you, I have another one. So in Proverbs, we have the scripture saying that he who finds a wife has found a good thing and has obtained favor in the sight of the Lord. So he who finds a wife, we're going to break it out. He who finds a wife. So it's not she who finds it herself, a husband. It's never stated that you as the woman should go out looking for a man for yourself. It says he who finds a wife has found a great thing. And my favorite part of it is the clause which goes and has obtained favor in the sight of the Lord. We're going to come back to that one. But as far as we see that pursue is inclined towards the man than it is to the woman. Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree. There's one one more example that I'd like to add as well, which is the story of Ruth and Boas. OK, so you read this story, you know, that Ruth was very loyal to her mother in law and like she was very kind and she had great qualities. A character was real good, real nice, sweet woman, you know, and we read in a story like Boas actually notice he based on how she just like carried herself and stuff like that. And Ruth basically displayed all of these characteristics and never like aggressively, you know, pursued or chased Boas like, hey, look, I mean, you know, I'm doing this and this and that like she wishes me herself to just being so graceful and lovely. And that is when Boas notice here. So her character actually left room for him to pursue her and the rest is history.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"So with that being said, let's continue with our conversation. Exploring this idea of being a chaser, specifically being a woman who is chasing. Okay. All right. All right. All right. So Tracy, thank you for telling me I do not have a problem. I appreciate that. It makes me feel so much better. Whoa, Tracy. All right. So we have established that we are believers and what we're talking about is based on biblical truth. So would you mind sharing with us some scriptural backing to this idea of pursuit and the man being the pursuer? Sure. But before that, I would like to talk about it from like the scientific point. Okay. Because we're both scientists, right? Yes, absolutely. So when it comes to pursuing, I feel like pursuing as a woman is you going against the law of nature. Not that I feel like, but it is you going against the law of nature. Men are supposed to pursue is innate. It is scientific. They enjoy pursuing. But if you're a woman, you have to be pursued. You don't have to go into the pursuit. You just sit and then you are pursued. So as I said, if the man is doing the pursuing, it is the law of nature. That is the normal thing to do. But then if you're a woman and you are the one pursuing, it is abnormal. And I don't want to go into testosterone and progesterone for today. We're just going to leave it at that and keep it simple. Yeah. I think we can even just look at, you know, animals, like even the domestic ones, right? Even a cat or a dog. Like when they're over here and stuff like that. And I love, I love how, I'm so sorry I'm interrupting you, but I love how you're using mammals to like explain it because a lot of people tend to use birds. And for the sake of argument, people always say birds are mammals. Birds are birds, even though birds also do portray the same like men chasing women type of thing. But people, people still complain and be like, so I love that you're using mammals. Yeah, yeah. So like even simple like example dogs, cats, like when they're, when they're ready to, when they're on heat, listen, when they're on heat. It's never like the woman, you know, chasing after the man. It's like the man is the one like trying to, you know, do all of the work. Right, like, especially when it, again, I'm interrupting, you know, finish, finish your point. No, go, go, go, you good. So you know how like when a woman, when the female dog, I don't want to see. When the female dog.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Some people would need a little push, a little shove to get to the point. And I feel like with this episode, also we never said the title of the episode, the title of the episode is, do you have a tail and a very big head? That's the title of this episode. So you might be wondering why did we title the episode, do you have a tail and a very big head? Because you're a lion. If you're chasing a man, you're a lion. A period. Yeah, you're a lion. If you're chasing a man, you're a lion. Yeah. Also, guys, we want to really clarify this before we proceed with the episode that these are our personal beliefs and these are the values we choose to uphold in our lives based on biblical truth. And so if you're listening to this episode and you do not subscribe to these things and you believe in a woman pursuing a man and all of that, that is absolutely fine. That is your life. You have the autonomy to make those decisions for your life. So don't come up to us like trying to fight. I mean, this is definitely a controversial topic, right? And we're open to have discussions about it respectfully. But if you come at us like trying to, you know, impose what you believe and think that what you believe is right, then I'm sorry. This is not the space for you. So just wanted to put that out there and yeah. Right. As Joanna has said, we are open to like discussions. I'm actually someone that is super open to learning more from people. I love to hear things from different perspectives. Provided that you have scripture backing it up and you can like argue down, I am open to listen. I really am open to listen. Even if you don't have scripture backing it and you can give me like concrete evidence. I am someone that analyzes data. I love data. I love trends. I love patterns. So if you can give me the data, the evidence, then yes. And you can argue it with it not having like potholes or loopholes or whatever. I will be down to accept and come on board. So I'm open. I really am open to listening. But I want us to bear in mind that it's going to be a conversation built on respect.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen, y'all. That was such a lovely prayer, Joanna. Thank you so much for blessing us. You're so welcome, Tracy. Oh, you're too cute. All right. Let's get into housekeeping for the week. So two things. The first thing, we are now active on Twitter and also on Instagram. So finally, make sure to follow Club 31 Pod on Twitter and Instagram. Also, we're now available on Apple podcast. So if you link that Spotify and want to check us out on Apple podcast, you can now do so. Again, Club 31 Pod. Also, finally, make sure to leave reviews under each of the streaming platforms you listen to us on. So if you listen on Spotify, can you give us a review? And if you listen to us on Apple podcast as well, leave us a review because that will go a long way to push the content out. And the reason why we're asking you to help push the content out isn't because we want, you know, to be known or whatever. But mainly, we just want to get the message across. First, this is a call from the Holy Spirit. And we just want to make sure to like do our due diligence of exhausting every single avenue possible to make sure that the messages are getting across the people that I need to hear them. And that will benefit from it. Secondly, finally, make sure to engage and connect with us on social media as saying when we put up host, please make sure to engage with the polls and send us as many messages as you can send us the messages we want is pumped, asked with the messages We want it all. So please, please, please, please let us know what you're thinking, your opinions, we want to have like an engagement with your engaging conversations, especially with topics that are going to be controversial or topics that are going to be raised. So, yeah, that's all we have for this week for housekeeping, but do believe I'll be back next week with housekeeping somewhere. We love it. Thank you so much, Tracy for keeping us up for bringing us up to date with what's going on in the club. Okay. All right. All right. All right, guys, we're gonna get straight into the topic for the day. Right. All right. All right. So, ladies and gentlemen, have you actually had conversations with like your friends, especially concerning dating. You know like have your friends confided in you about your dating experiences, interesting people they're meeting what they're like actually doing in their dating relationships, you know, all of that all of that. Um, yeah, I have, I have had a lot of way to be your own. I don't know. But let's see, I have. That's what I was trying to just get to this point of saying, I have had a lot of them a lot of conversations with my friends, a lot of my friends have confided in me and shared their dating experiences, some of them have been like really interested in that. Is that what y'all doing. Oh wow, bro like. Okay, I see you are like, Oh, that's so cute, you know. But hey, listen, one of the conversations that I actually had is what inspired this podcast. Okay. I mean this a inspired this podcast episode. Okay, so what happened was my one of my friends, right. Let's call her. premium flowers flowers. You're too cute. All right, let's call her flowers. Right. So flowers opened up to me about her dating, one of her dating experiences. Well, actually not one but multiple right and she shared how sometimes she felt like she was taking the lead in like a relationships. And it's like, you know, she would she wanted more from like the man in like it felt like she was doing everything, you know, and sometimes she's I we don't I deserve because like obviously we see a lot of things on the consumer lot of media from social media and see how people are in their relationships and are when you're dating and stuff so she feel like way but you know I'm always doing this and that. Um, but then I listened to her and like when she asked for my opinion on my advice, I told her basically that this is, I personally think that a man should pursue a woman. And if a man is not pursuing you. He probably isn't the one for you. And that is what I believe in. So, as I haven't like all of this conversation, I started to think when I noticed like this thing of like woman pursuing man. I was a little bit taken back. Because that is not what I believe in, and that is not how I live my life. Right. So, I came to my dear sis trace to ask, maybe I have a problem you know like a. First of all, your eyes are like, Oh, she wasn't in a relationship just being a relationship. That's number one. Number two, she's not going after a man. So, that's trying to have a problem. It got me thinking, and I want my dear sister Tracy to help me out here. Love this conversation. Yeah. All right, so does Joanna have a problem that is a good question. Yes, when I has a problem and has many problems. This is a very big problem we can need to fix it. Why are you know pursuing men. I'm like enlighten me I want to hear it. What's my problem, you are looking at me like this girl headed. Let me tell you, I just want to hear. I do not think you have a problem. And the reason why I do not think you have a problem is probably because I'm on the same page as you are. So, I too have friends that have come up to me and I've spoken up but like one for me my friends have had like, I think the conversation is a little bit different from the conversations you've had with like flowers. For me the conversations I've had with my friends are more like, have you ever been in a relationship, and then I go, Yes, and then they go, Oh, how did you get yourself in a relationship, or I saw this man, and I liked him. And so I decided to tell him that I liked him and wanted to get in a relationship. So those are the kind of conversations I've had with my friends. Wow, I'm friends that are brave, super brave and kudos to those friends like y'all know yourself, it's something I cannot do, I really cannot get myself to like, shoot my shot, I am an brave woman. They are, they are. They truly are and I always look at them and I'm always like well like they are unstoppable. They are fearless, and I really wish to channel that into something else, but they're channeling it into like relationships, I don't know if that is like something I'm subscribed to. So, to answer your question do I think Joanna has a problem. No, I do not think Joanna has a problem. I really do not think you have a problem. I think we are on different paths, like everybody's on different paths of their lives. Some people are going to get to the point that you've got into fast. Some people are going to be a little bit slow to get to that point.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"But no, he thought that no, they're not as replaceable. You are so unique. Your fingerprints are unique to you. There are a lot of things that are unique to your human body alone physically. Your irises are unique to you. Your tongue partings are unique to you. Snowflakes are even unique. There is so much uniqueness to you as a whole. Please don't let anyone treat you as you are replaceable. Please don't. Don't ever accept that you're replaceable and never think that someone is also replaceable. Now, I'm not saying that if someone is beating you and kicking you or whatever, you're still going to be there because Tracy said the people are irreplaceable. No, I'm saying that if the person is adding value to you and treating you like you are not, I mean, you're not replaceable, then yes, you should be in it. So, yeah, that's basically it. I just thought about it from the Christian point of view, Christian perspective. I realized that God as a human treated me like I'm irreplaceable. I'm irreplaceable to God. So, who are you? I feel like it's something people suggest to make themselves feel better. Yeah. And even to conclude, I watched a video today of a really interesting man, I think. I'll save that for another time. But, he coded this scripture, Ephesians 1 verse 4, and I want to read that out. Ephesians 1 verse 4, and I want to read that out. So, he's been through a lot of, you know, not so great things in his life, but he's Christian now, and he holds on to this scripture because he came to the realization that even before Genesis 1-1, God chose him. All of the crazy things he was even going to do in his lifetime, God chose him to be on this earth at this specific time. And, like, when you were speaking, when you were saying that very last bit, Holy Spirit basically reminded me of this scripture, and I was like, wow, that's actually true. Like, God chose each and every single one of us. Exactly. Even before the foundations of the earth, so that we will be holy, consecrated, and set apart for his purpose. And so, like, we are unique to God. When you said, like, God could have just wiped us out, he tried. He didn't do it. Because he realized, I've actually chosen these people even how many years before the foundations of this earth. So, I can't just wipe them off and just say, like, hey, whatever, like, I'm not doing this again. No. I'm not going to replace them, but I'm actually going to let my will be done. And if I've chosen them before they were born, before the foundations of this earth, I'm going to allow that purpose to come to fruition. So, nobody is replaceable. Thank you. Period. Alrighty. So, yo, that's all we have for you for this week. But don't worry, we'll be back next week. Same time, same place. And you're not going to stop hearing from us. We're going to be here. So, I hope you learned one or two things. Please, if you want to join in the conversation, I am open to learning more. So, if you have stuff to get off your chest with regards to this topic, maybe you have, like, you have an opposing view, and you have your reasons backing up, please engage me, like, please send in your thoughts, your opinion on what we said, what we discussed today, and I will willingly read it. So, yeah, and if you do agree and you have, like, something to support or consecrate, whatever we said, also send it to us. Send it to me. Me, I will read. I will read. I love to read it. I will read. So, send it to us and tell us what you think. And I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast topic as much as I enjoyed speaking on it. And next week, God willing, Joanna is going to be talking about something that's on her heart. So, come back and come listening. Alrighty. Have a great night, everyone. Joanna, do you want to pray for us again? Shall we pray? Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you, precious Holy Spirit, for being here and for steering this conversation in the way that you did. Thank you, God, Father God. We have learned today that you love us so much that you chose us even before the foundations of this earth, and you made us so unique such that we are not replaceable. Thank you, Father God, and we hope that everyone who hears this message will learn something from you and hears your word and you attend to them and meet them at the point of their need. Thank you. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen, girl. Amen. I love when you pray.Don't forget to follow us on Instagram. We have our Instagram page up for rolling. Until next time, buh-bye. Bye, lovely sloth.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"So for example, I do not drink, right? I would tell person A that I do not drink, but then I'll tell person B that I love pina coladas. Exactly. So I didn't add that it would be virgin. I just said, I love pina coladas. So if person A and person B meet up and they're talking, person A is going to be like, she doesn't drink. And then person B is like, but she says she likes pina coladas. And then they're like, oh, then she's lying. No one comes to ask me, like, do you, like, why did you tell person A that, or tell person B that. And to be very honest, I do that because I'll be bored. That's why I withhold like certain information for real. And then also I know where the information comes from. So that's why I do that, but I'm not lying. People really think that I'm lying. Now I'm not saying that you should be withholding information. That's not a good thing to do. That's not a good thing to say. It's something I should even stop doing or whatever. But then again, as I said, I just do it just to know where the info, like who is talking. And if I know who is talking, bye. Basically, that's it. But it's not something you should do, but yeah, that's your, yes, lying isn't good, period. Yeah, no lying. And finally, I feel like loyalty. I say loyalty because I think cheating is something that I also really, really hate. First of all, I feel like a lot of people are like, you know, cheating can happen, like it can be a mistake. Some people can cheat and then come and explain to me that, oh, it was a mistake. It happened because of whatever reason, but basically it all boils down to it being a mistake. And I don't know, but I don't believe that too. That's also my other unpopular opinion. I don't think you cheat by mistake. I think it's a mindset, right? Like it takes intentionality. Thank you. It takes intentionality to be loyal to whoever it is that you're in a relationship with. And so when you find yourself in the hard situations where you feel like, oh my gosh, this is almost an impossible thing for me to escape, or maybe this person has grabbed me and I can't do anything. It's a decision. Obviously, if someone is forcing you and it's not consensual, that's different. But if you consented to do whatever it is with someone else and you cheated, I don't ever see that as a mistake. I think you don't respect yourself. You don't respect me. And that's it. And I feel like people don't realize that you can still cheat in platonic relationships. It's not just a romantic relationship. You can't very much cheat in a platonic relationship. So please get yourself straight and know who's your friend. Take your platonic relationships as personal as you do your romantic ones. Don't be cheating on your friends. It's funny you said that because I saw this post and so this girl found out that her friend was cheating on their partner. And so she stopped being friends with the person. Like she cut the person off. And it was like a discussion, I think on Twitter, and people were saying, was she like so dramatic for cutting off her friend, for cheating on their partner and all that. And I just like moved into the discourse a little bit and then I just kept moving with my life. Whatever. So, yeah, as she said, I just remembered the post something, I guess if you're in that position, you probably would have cut the friend off to based on what you're saying. Yeah, because why are you cheating? Yeah, they were cheating on their partner. Did they talk about it as friends? I don't know. I don't even remember. To be honest, I didn't really engage with the discussion post. I just saw it, I read it, and then I heard like people talking about it. Like, hmm, do you think she's wrong for that? And I was like, ciao. I'm living my life pushing. I'm not about to engage in this. Okay, yeah. Alright, so based on what you said, right, if you had a friend that was loyal and honest and brought peace, joy, and some sort of financial expansivity to your life. So you basically would consider this person as valuable. Yes. So would you think this person is replaceable? No. Why are you saying it that way? Because it's a simple yes and no question and answer. And also, like, I must add, like, even with the value that they place, like, spiritually, I feel like in growing, I've started to understand the importance of spiritual friends. And that has been like something that has tremendously changed my life, and I'm so grateful that I do have the opportunity to, you know, have such friends, any people that at first I wouldn't have thought like they were in that position or whatever. Now, like we do have that type of relationship and it's amazing. I love that. I feel like I was telling my friend one day, I told her that I think I've come to a conclusion that one of my love languages is when someone prays for me. And she was like, oh, you're speaking my language? And I was like, yeah, because I think if you, you're able to literally go to God and say, hey, I want to pray, like, I want to talk to you about Joanna, blah, blah, blah, for, I mean, obviously not a bad reason, but for good reason and stuff like that. And like you pray to God about me, maybe I'm dealing with something that I've told you about, or you're just praying for me or whatever it is, like just going to God and talking about me. Oh my gosh, it touches my heart so much. Like it's literally the best thing ever. Like that, that would be like my best gift. Like, like take away everything else. Take it all. I'll take that. Like you praying for me. That's my love language, period. So yes, the spiritual aspect is high up because life, as you already mentioned earlier, is pretty hard and you can do it on your own. And you need friends who can stand in for you whenever like things get really tough and they can stand in for you, not just physically, but spiritually. Me, I need me a good spiritual friend, period. Right. Right. So basically what I'm hearing is you notice value. Yeah. Yeah. You notice when someone is adding something to your life, spiritually, physically, whatever it is, you notice. I love that for you. Yeah. It's important. I feel like, as you said, it takes intentionality. Like you need to know who is in your life and for what reason they are. It's definitely easier said than done, but it is very important. Like you don't just allow anyone into your life, one, and you should know who is in your life, who is in your inner circle, who is in your close circle, who's in your outer circle, whatever it is. Jesus Christ, he had a lot of people following him. He had, I forgot the other number. And then he had the 12 and then he even had three, you know, so like you need, you need to know and you need to have like all of those boundaries. So you know who truly is like, I like what you said when you said, like, I tell people just a bit. So I kind of can track what is going on. Information goes out. I know that this is who said it. Right. It's a good, exactly. Like I know, I know where all my information is. So for me, I'm protecting myself in that sense. Cause like, you know, just in case, just in case sometimes, you know, probably doesn't get intention to let stuff slip out, but it could come out and that is okay. It's okay. But it just tells me, okay, so with this person, I need to know what I see and what I should say. Exactly, because I'm an uncle now. Right. I can be telling everything now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, oh my gosh, this has been such a good conversation. It has. And I just want to, just to be clear before like we sign up, just to be clear, I do not think people are replaceable. Repeat it. Yeah. Again, from the point in the back. I said, I do not think that people are replaceable. Probably the person isn't adding value to your life. But, you know, they say one month's meet is another month's poison. Just as maybe if the person isn't adding value to your life, the person is going to be adding value to someone else's life. So, to that person, that person isn't even replaceable. So please learn to treat people well. Let's stop treating people like they're dispensable. Cause then when you have, I feel like when you have the mentality that everyone is replaceable, you treat them like they are replaceable. That doesn't speak well of you. Like if you, if you look at a person as, oh, this person is a person of value. This person is not replaceable. Then you would be very intentional about how you handle the person and how you talk to the person and how you treat the person and how you receptive you are to the person. But if you have the thought that everyone is like, everything is replaceable, you're going to treat the person as such. And to debunk that argument that there are 8 billion people in the world, are you going to meet all those 8 billion people in the world? Absolutely not. And then also the 8 billion people in the world. There are kids in it. There are old, gramply, old, wrinkly people. I love my old people though. Like old people, wrinkly that you wouldn't be attracted to. And then there are people that just wouldn't even fit in your category. Yet they are 8 billion people in the world, but you don't have the option of 8 billion people. Let's be real. Yeah. Even companies do know when like someone is super valuable to their goal and it's an asset and wouldn't even lay the pricing off. So how much more you have on that? Yeah. I just want to add to that and say that truly people are not replaceable. And what you were saying about like, even if someone doesn't add value to you, they probably are adding value to someone else. I would like to say that yes, that is very true. You let people into your life for multiple different reasons. If there comes a time where the person is unable to add value to your life at that point where you need it, then the person will. It's okay to absolutely let them go. Thank you. Just let them go, respectfully, because they're human and it's just not it at this time. Sometimes I realize we can be in different seasons of our lives, right? So maybe in this very particular season, they're not going to be able to add value. Who knows? Maybe 20 years down the line, they might be in a position to add value to your life. So if you like disrespectfully just dispose of them, how are you going to get that value that you need 20 years from now? Because as we said, everyone's value that they bring is unique to who they are. So you miss out on that, you're missing out. Right. One of the old folks say again, the person you meet on your way down is the same person you're going to meet on your way up. Wait, no. On your way up is who you're going to meet on your way down. I said it wrong. Some like that. Yeah, I know that. I hope they do. Yeah. Yeah. So if someone's not adding value, respectfully, you can just let them go and just you don't know what the future holds. I'm not saying you're always going to do sound profile, but if it happens, at least you left it on a good note. Right. Yeah. No one is truly replaceable. And thank God the human beings are not replaceable. Tracy, do you want to talk about just wrap it up with your story? You told me about how even God does not think we are replaceable. Right. Sure. So I was thinking about it. Like I've been thinking about the whole people are replaceable. That's the thing about me. When I hear something, I like to look at it from different angles and see the different views and then see, does this align with what I believe, what I think and what the Bible says? So I looked at it from different angles. Did it make sense in the beginning? I was like, yeah, it kind of makes sense. That's the thing. But that was it. We're just crashing. I feel like we're just crashing the surface. So I dug a little deeper. And then I was like just marinating on me, just thinking about it. And I realized that honestly, if human beings were replaceable, God could have replaced every single one of us like quickly. But he did not like we are so important and so special to him that he came down and died to try to fix us and get us to be with him. So if God thinks I am so important and not as replaceable as people are making it seem now, then why would someone think that someone is replaceable? If God doesn't think I'm replaceable like that. So then why are you thinking I'm replaceable? Why are you as a human being thinking I'm replaceable? And then I'm reminded of the story of how like he tried to wipe out the whole human race and just restarted. Right. And again, he could have just he tried to just replace everybody like the better things. And I don't want to go into the complexities of the fall and everything, but he could have just restarted everything and just, you know, keep pushing again. Just hit the reset button.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Again, I said period, I'm sorry. But, oh, that's really good. That's really good. I really like side with you on, like, on those three more, especially the first two. I feel like, as you said, life is hard. And the last thing you want is a harder relationship, regardless of like, if it's romantic or platonic or whatever. Like, all of my relationships have to be peaceful or have to bring me peace. I'm sorry, but sometimes I have to cut people off because it's just so stressful having a conversation with them. It feels like talking to a wall. It feels like, listen, you come for advice or whatever, and I literally spend hours talking about something with you. And then you pretty much go and fall right back into the pit, and you come back to me like, huh? Time is money, honey. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's money. And so if you're not going to respect my time and respect, like, my wisdom and all that, then maybe you have to go. So yes, peace is really, really important. Enjoy, like, if you know me, you know I love to laugh. Like, I love me good laugh. I feel like Tuesday night, 80, maybe 75% of the time, we're laughing. Yeah, about everything. First it was like, 95% of the time we're laughing. Yeah, now we're agreeing. We're agreeing. Like, we could never make a statement without laughing. We would laugh. Oh my gosh. But now it's a little bit reduced, but it's not like that. We do still have a good laugh. But, you know, right now we're growing as she said, growing in wisdom. We're having, you know, girl-woman conversations. Yeah, most of our conversations are about making money now or making money. Oh God. Oh my gosh. We be talking about our spiritual lives. Yeah, those are what I was about to say. Like, when it comes to the peaceful or the peace part of my assessment to like how the person is spiritually. Because if you have peace with God, you gonna have peace yourself and you gonna give me peace as well. So yeah, the person having peace is also like, you know, important with, I mean, peace with their creator is important. So if Joanna and I are talking about anything, let me tell you what our conversation involves. Money, money, God, good, good, good, good, good, money, and then anything we saw and then we start to laugh again. That's so true. That is literally it. So yeah, like, yeah, you said it all. So yes, joy is important. Peace is important. Money, as she said, she already explained it. I'm not going to go into it. Also, like, value, I'd say, like, honesty. You know, I was thinking about it. But yesterday, actually, I watched this movie and like, it was a cliched love story and like the guy lied to the girl and all that and they had a little fight and they came up together, obviously. But then I was thinking about it, I was like, to be fair, like, lying is such a big deal. Like lying to someone is like, bro, I don't respect you enough. And I'm just gonna tell you anything just because, you know, and also like as a Christian, the Bible tells us that the devil is a lie. And if you're lying, I think you need to check your father because it ain't God. And if you, no, but for real, if you do, like, tend to lie a lot, a lot of, you know, little white lies and all of that, you need to be serious about it and take it to God in prayer and ask Him to help you because lying is not good. I feel like lying truly breaks, like, a good thing. To me, it is one of like my non-negotiables, I would say, in the relationship. Like, you need to be honest, you need to be honest with me and I will be honest with you. And yeah, we'll have a great relationship. It's funny how you said that, and I'm going to go off the tangent, but a lot of, it's so funny because a lot of people think that I'll be lying to them when I'm, when I'm not, it's so funny. Like I literally tackle when, I don't know how, I don't know why, but a lot of people really be thinking that like I'm lying to them when I say stuff.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"But then again, we're not shaming anyone that, like, you know, see, you got to save. So if that's what you got to do, you got to do. But we're just speaking from our point of view. And from my point of view, I would rather save and get the original than get the generic every single time. Because I know that, to me, the generic has no value. Like, again, that's why I said, I don't know if I've been hit by capitalism and consumerism so well, but I know it doesn't have value. So if that doesn't have value, I would rather get the one that has value. The same with you and me. Like, I'm just sorry, I keep saying period, but like your state of facts, like, that's good stuff, because that's what it is. That's what it is. So I think this is even like a great segue into how we place value on our friendships, because if we keep talking about value and value and value, like, we're not talking about products here. Obviously, we're talking about human beings, and we're talking about relationships, and we're talking about value in relationships and people's values, right? So let's talk about it. Like, what does it look like for you when you're in a friendship and you're maybe having to assess the value that someone is bringing in or how you are also like, contributing to that friendship or relationship or whatever? Okay, so for me, if I say these three things are the things that like, I would say I prioritize in a relationship with someone. So if the thing isn't bringing, if wellness thing, I'm talking about human beings, say the person isn't bringing me peace, happiness or joy, or money. No, for sure. Or money. I'm sorry, you gotta go. That to me is, then you're out of it. You're out of the category for me. Like, my valuable category, you're out of it. So what do I mean by peace? Like, for example, it is not, there is no beef. Like, honestly, I'm such a nonchalant person. I hate exhausting energy. I'm doing that mostly in the gym. Why would I do it with a human being as well? So I'm not even interested in it. So if it is something that is exhaustive, like it is depreciating my energy, probably you talking about people. I hear when people gossip about people, when like you gossip about people, it's not bringing me peace. You're not helping me out. You talking about this person doesn't please. I'm sorry, you gotta go. If you're not bringing me joy or happiness, like you make me love, after a stressful day, I can call you and start to laugh or something. Or when I'm sad, you bring my mood up and you're rather contributing to me being sad. Like, life is harder, and then you two are harder to delight. Like, no, I gotta let you go. And also, if you don't bring me money, so if you don't, like, for example, helping me grow financially, like my mindset or whatever, you're not helping me in any way, shape, or form, and it will benefit my positive, then what are you doing? That is literally how I assist my relationship. So three components, peace, joy, and money.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"And I speak to Joanna A and she has the same thing, same characteristics, same thinking, thoughts. Everything is similar to, is same, not even similar, is same to Joanna B. Yes, still there is no vibe. It's not as authentic. It's not as genuine. There's something missing, the same missing ingredients with Joanna A. But then with Joanna B, I have the missing ingredient present and she has the same characteristics, same... Would I say that Joanna is replaceable? No, I wouldn't say she's replaceable because Joanna has checked almost all of the boxes and now I cannot find someone. Like, I tried cloning her and the person still had a missing ingredient to the person. You know what you just said. She reminded me of GV products, like, great value. Right, right. Brand versus generic. Like, why do you still go for the brand exactly? Why aren't you going for the generic? Because some products, yes, some generic products are good, but you still want... Because it is not Balenciaga. Like, it has no value. In that sense, is it replaceable? No, like, let's talk about it. You can't even replace clothes, like brand clothes, and you're talking about replacing human beings. No matter how hard you try, like, actually just talking about this has brought, like, so many more examples in my head. Like, so many things that we go for even when people buy dupes of, like, bags and shoes and perfumes and, like, all of these other things. It is just not the original. And you'll know it. Not replace it. Like, I remember the first time I came to Cleveland, I believe. Or, no, no, no, no. I don't know. There was this time, like, when I was in the US and my auntie told me about this shop called Aldi. And Aldi tends to have, like, lower value products, but pretty much the same. It's like GB products. And it's cheaper. And she told me, like, hey, if you want to save money on groceries, you can check out Aldi. They have a lot of the things that you get, but they're no name and they're cheaper. And I was like, okay, sure. Like, I remember going to Aldi, like, three to four times and I was just not feeling it. Why? Because when I would buy the product, yeah, I remember, like, I got rolled oats. What was the name? Quaker. Exactly. And it just wasn't the same. Like, when I would eat the rolled oats, I'm like, bruh, can you just be done so I can actually buy those? That's the original. And I stopped shopping at Aldi because I was like, I'm not truly getting the value for my money. Exactly. Like, yes, you have the product. Yeah. And I do. And honestly, let's talk about how you, okay, probably for me, maybe I have been impacted by capitalism and consumerism or whatever. But when I'm buying generic products instead of the branded products, sometimes it will show me. Like, tell me about it. No, like, I would rather a couple extra dollars to get the original than to save that and not be satisfied for the duration of, like, me using the product. Right. And if I absolutely cannot get the original, you know what, I'm going to work harder and come back and get the original.
Club 31 Pod
"31" Discussed on Club 31 Pod
"Everyone is replaceable. Joanna, you are replaceable. Even when people buy dupes of like bags and shoes and perfumes and like all of these other things, it is just not the original. And you know it! Hello, lovely people. Hi, Joanna. How are you doing? I'm doing good, Tracy. How are you? I'm doing great myself. It is Labor Day. What did you do today? Well, I pretty much cleaned my apartment, which has been quite in a mess for a bit. But I got to cleaning and I'm really excited because I think, I do love cleaning. I don't think, but I do love cleaning. So just being able to do that makes me happy. So that's pretty much all I did. How about you? You said I'm wife material. For me, I just spend the day working. You know, not much. But yeah, that's basically it. Ain't nothing to it. I wish I was out exactly. Just running. I wish I was outside though. Cause I've seen like the videos of the carnival happening in Brooklyn. And I wish I could go for the carnival. But you know, if we just wear horses, Vegas will ride. Period. She's educated. Yeah, period. Well, today we do have a spicy topic. But before we do get into it, we'll have to start with prayer. Alright, should we pray? Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for today. Thank you Father God that finally we're able to sit here and to have discussions on different topics. But also to glorify you with our words. Holy Spirit, we invite you into this space. We actually acknowledge you in this space. And we ask that you would be our guide and director. And help us to say that which you want us to say to bring glory to your holy name. Thank you in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Why are you looking at me like that? I wish everyone could see. When she's giving sight, I'm like, amen. Amen. You were looking at me like, you know how when you un-spit me about a like play or who or whatever. That's how you were looking at me. You're like, this is how I want to do this stuff. This is how I want to do things again. How you started, I can't help it. I was going to, but when I saw your face, I was like, let me be steady. That's funny. Oh well, oh well, oh well. Guys, I'm excited about this topic. I feel like it has been a hot topic maybe. A lot of people talking about it lately. And so we also want to discuss and give our take on it. Before that, let's give out our business shout-out of the day. Of the week actually, because you're not going to hear from us the following week. So this week's business shout-out goes to Neil Bina. And she's upcoming and she makes beautiful nail designs, persons, whatever it is. She's really good at her job and I entreat everyone to look her up on Instagram. Nailed Bina, N-A-I-L-E-D, by N-A-A. She's so good at what she does, yo. I look at her work and I'm like, well, I'm proud of her. I'm proud of her work. So, and I will never show anyone fake. Period. Thank you. So yeah, y'all go check her out. Go check her out. I think she's a really great nail artist. So what? Yeah, nail tech. Oh, nail tech? Yeah. Nail tech. Okay, yeah, nail tech, yeah. And she's, she's a friend of ours. So please support her business. Yeah, period. All right, Tracy, do you want to get us into our topic for today? Everyone is replaceable. Joanna, you are replaceable. Oh my gosh. Why did that just sound like so off in my ears? What? Say, I want to hear that. You are replaceable. Oh my gosh, that hurts my feelings. I'm sorry. Not. Well, I don't think I'm a believer that honestly, like as woke as it sounds. I don't think I believe that. And I have to say I agree with you. It is a statement that when I hear, sends word flags to me. And I'm sharing the same sentiments as you do. I really hate to hear people say that like, everyone is replaceable. Everyone is replaceable. Everyone is replaceable. Because then, you then treat people as dispensable. And I don't think anyone is dispensable. But yeah. Yeah, back to you. What would you say? Yeah, I was saying like, it sounds like a very woke statement. Like, you know how one person gets up and they have their opinion about something and everyone just kind of hops on it without like, actually, Deeping it and like forming their own personal opinion about it. Or sometimes like people feel like their opinion is contrary to the majority. And so they feel like, you know, what in order to not come up as controversial or whatever. I'ma just, you know, run with what everyone else is saying. Right. So that is a woke statement. Everyone is what replaceable. Everyone is replaceable. And it's so funny that in recent years is gaining popularity.