40 Burst results for "Match"
ACG - The Best Gaming Podcast
A highlight from The Best Gaming Podcast #411 Phantom liberty review breakdown, Embracer multi dev lay-offs, and more
"And what's up everybody? This is Karrick with ACG and I'm here with Abzi, Johnny Silver and myself doing the best gaming podcast 411 number 411. Thank you everybody for joining you get a chance to check out the YouTube membership. We've got a new special on there for YouTube members. You can join it. You can become a part of the discord also scientifically proven people who become members of the YouTube more sex for sure, especially if you're a virgin when you get the membership and then you have sex 100 % more sex than you've ever had before. So you definitely want to be a YouTube member. We're going to talk about cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. We're going to talk about all of the Embracer cuts. There's been a ton of the Embracer cuts, which is really sad. We're going to talk about payday 3. We're going to talk about some review scores how that's all coming about going to talk about some new games that released that I want to ask these guys if they've played and I haven't told them not because I was trying to keep it secret, but just because I had forgotten to tell them prior talk about the DLC for Resident Evil 4 Ada Wong. What was that called? Do you guys remember starting? Starting over? Starting again? Starting? Isn't it something like that? Nope. Let's let's name it ourselves. Ada Wong bad voice actress does separate ways. Alright, terrible voice actress and then we'll talk about. Yeah, we'll talk about a bunch of other stuff. Welcome to silver who hasn't been here for a while. I'm starting to pay these guys again, not be not. That's not why he came back, but that's because because I didn't tell him that yet, but we finally got everything sort of situated here and I want to say how much I appreciate the support and stuff like that because it helps the channel stay on YouTube, which is a little bit difficult right now, but we're getting it figured out what have we been playing. Let's go with silver first because it's been a while. You said you've been doing some Payday 3? Yeah, a little bit today. Like actually managed to get some functionality from the servers. I've otherwise been down for a lot of people and get a couple of games in. Gameplay wise, it's solid. I think it's a significant improvement on Payday 2 in terms of just the gameplay, particularly the stealth. The stealth feels a lot less janky. It feels a lot more fun to engage with. It's a lot more predictable in terms of how you interact with it, where when it goes wrong, you have a pretty good decent idea of what went wrong and how you got detected. Where with Payday 2, it could be really, really janky. But I found it to be more predictable this time around. Gunplay is also a huge improvement. It feels really, really satisfying, really, really fun to shoot the guns. The animations for reloading and stuff feel pretty good. So that's also a significant bump in terms of the game's quality. So yeah, it's more fun to play. But unfortunately, the game suffers a lot under the decision to take it to online only, which is something that a lot of people feared back when they announced it a couple of months ago. Because it does require server functionality and the server functionality hasn't really been there. It has to be said that Payday 3 has jumped to the top of the Steam charts. So they've seen a lot of success and that does often introduce issues in an online game when there's issues with it in the data and early access leading up to the release. And so they weren't able to address it for launch either. Servers are crashing. And it's really frustrating for players who are going through a heist stealthily, like nearly an hour of prep work and stuff and you're at the getaway. And then the game drops you and you get nothing for That's it. happened a bunch to a lot of people. It also happened to me today. At one point. There's also some really weird decisions in terms of the multiplayer where there's no voice chat functionality inside the game, which is bizarre in a game so heavily reliant on proper coordination between teammates. There's no text, you can't use text chat in you can't even like if you click ready when you're like readying up for the lobby, you can't unclick ready. So you can't read. So you bet you best be ready. You better be ready if you click that button. Yeah. And yeah, it's just weird. And when the missions end, your team gets disbanded. So if you actually end up with a bunch of competent randoms, you lose complete touch with each other and you can't like talk to them over voice chat or anything to like get a sense of contact information or anything. So the social aspect of the game has been severely limited. The matchmaking itself is really poor. There's no like the crime net functionality of pay day two is basically gone. You basically just go to a mission, you select a difficulty and whether you want it to be public or private or or friends only or whatever or invite only. And those are basically the only filter options you get. And then the game tries to find you tries to match you up and fails frequently at the moment. But that those are all the only options you get. And that I find that severely limited and basic. And I would have liked there to be like more filter options like do you want to play stealth? Do you want to play loud? Those were filter options that were eventually integrated into payday two. And like their absence feels particularly odd here, especially, especially when you also coupled it with the absence of all the other stuff, like the absence of voice chat and stuff like that. It sort of compounds the issue. So it's, it's a very mixed bag. But yeah, gameplay, gameplay wise, really fun to play. Yeah, regardless. Big improvement from from payday two, I think. All right, Johnny, what have you been playing? There we go. So interestingly, I've been spending most of my time playing games on lines of P this week, which as you guys know, that's kind of a 180 from where I was at, we talked about the demo, I wasn't really happy with what was in there, right? I wasn't the game is better than maybe they improved it since I played it. But there's something about it that just fits perfectly into what I wanted. You know, it's a more linear, streamlined souls game, where I can kind of just focus on the leveling, creating builds, crafting weapons. Yeah. And just getting good at the game, right? Or like understanding the the attacks and stuff. So it kind of removes a lot of the getting lost and exploring, which is admittedly, a great part of souls games. But it's not something that I wanted right now, after being in BG three and starfield and all. Yeah, yeah, it's it's good to like not have to worry about that kind of stuff. Sometimes. Exactly. I just know, I won't be getting lost. Right. And I can kind of always trudge on at a pretty good pace. And I frankly, like the combat quite a bit, surprisingly, again, because I'm not a fan of perfect parry. And the game does basically rely on that. Yeah, but they've managed to make it really satisfying. It's kind of like a dopamine hit, you know, when you do get the perfect parry, because you can break enemy weapons, you can stagger them by doing that. So just kind of it feels powerful. It's not just like a gimmick, like an Oh, you got outplay. Yeah, right. It's like, actually, whoa, okay, this is powerful. Right. And you can physically see the effect to because the enemy weapon glows when you perfect parry. And this means you're breaking it right. You're in the process of breaking it. Yeah, by by parry. So that's a huge ability to impact their weapons. That's because that's pretty rare. I mean, I don't I don't know if I remember. And to visually see the weapon broken to let you know, it will be a sword and then the tip is broken, right? And they do way less damage. It's just cool, man. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Abzi? What are you playing? This week, I played more starfield. And then I some played Liza P, I could like four or five bosses. And then I tried the 2 .0 update for cyberpunk. Oh, so you've been jumping or well, probably started the week, I assume with starfield and then starfield. And then when Liza P came out, I checked it out for a bit. I checked it out for a while. I think I put in like seven or eight hours in that game. Should I talk about it? Or are we going to talk about it later? We'll talk which one Liza P starfield or Liza P. You can talk about right now because just continue Johnny's part. What do you like? What are you getting from it or not? I think it's a fine game. I think it's a fun game. I think, however, it's it's it's less of a soul. It's it's it's souls like to the point where it's like a souls born Sekiro clone. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think I think it tries to pretty much get a bunch of elements from those three main IPs, even Elden Ring with like the ways some bosses and some enemies kind of fucking go like this for like an hour and then like start hitting whatever. So it gets like the parry from Sekiro and like the left mechanical arm thing from Sekiro has like the bloodborne thing of regenerating health and like aggression. But with this one, you have to block so that you're able to do that. And and it has also you can argue that the the setting is more like bloodborne than anything else. And it has like the kind of tries to hit the atmosphere of the souls games. But I feel like they missed the mark a little bit because the characters do talk slow and like this, you know, I mean, like a souls game. But I don't think the VA is quite up to snuff there. Like it always pulled me out. It kind of felt like they're a little bit too tryhardy on that area of talking. But I think it's I think the fun factor is there. I think the fun factor is definitely there. Now, I think it's a it's the sum of its parts. What is it? What's the saying? It's greater than the sum greater than some of its parts, because when you hone in on like one thing, like one mechanic, like let's say like the parrying, I think it's tight parrying. I think it's a it's about as tight as Sekiro. But I feel like the enemies or the enemy animations aren't kind of built around that you can definitely get good at parrying. But I feel like with Sekiro, the reason why it really worked very well is because there was like a nice kind of rhythmic dance to it, especially with the sound effects and stuff like you could like close your eyes and parry a boss. So it had that thing where the whole game was, was kind of designed around that one thing, which was the parrying mechanic, I think it tries to do a lot of things. And it doesn't hit its mark, like really well with one thing, but all of them put together, it's pretty fun, because you have a lot of options. Like for example, for blocking, you can block and suffer some health damage and and kill that, like hit the enemy so that you get gain your health back. But at the same time, you can also perfect parries. So you have like, and then you can dodge as well. I don't think like the dodge itself is like really good and really tight. I don't think the because I think the hitboxes are kind of fucked in this game, to be honest. And I don't think the parry is like the game isn't designed around it, as I said before, so it's not like really right there. But them together offers like a better kind of experience because you still have that risk versus reward factor. I think it's fun overall, I just have like some issues with it, where there's like better alternatives that focus more on those aspects. Yeah. Gotcha. Super, super chat from wannabe dev. Perfect way to start the weekend. Glad to see silverback. Look at that. He's glad to see silverback. Thank you. Like it. Silverback. Glad to see silverbacks.
Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
Fresh "Match" from Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
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CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Why FTX Might Try to Claw Back Funds From Retail Customers
"Thanks for listening to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto, on the CoinDesk podcast network. You can also listen to the episodes on the Unchained feed earlier if you subscribe there. Plus check out all our content on our website, unchainedcrypto .com. These are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming to lift funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is, like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by Thales, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LORA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Thomas Brazile, founder of 117 Partners. Welcome, Thomas. Hey, Laura. Good to see you again. This week, FTX sued Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried. Alleging that Bankman was intimately involved in a number of the allegedly fraudulent schemes, such as silencing someone who threatened to expose the alleged FTX fraud, the purchase of property in the Bahamas, Barbara Fried encouraged the use of strong donors as campaign finance laws, or allegedly, and both were accused generally of either knowing or ignoring the red flags that FTX was insolvent. Was this development surprising or expected? Thanks for having me on, Laura. Good to see you, as always. Was it surprising? No, I don't think it was that surprising. I think what was in the lawsuits in bankruptcy referred to as adversary proceeding, but what was seen in the adversary proceeding was probably a bit shocking, the actual details, but I think people knew that they were pretty involved. I think that was some of the heat they were getting post him getting a criminal complaint against him was that, why is he hanging out with his parents? Weren't they involved in a lot of parts of the business and people were saying things like that. I don't think it's that unexpected. People, I think, long knew that there were some real estate transactions where they were gifted or given some certain real estate in the Bahamas, but to see it all laid out in the complaint or I should say in the adversary proceeding was interesting. Which items in particular really struck you? I guess just the involvement in the actual day -to -day stuff. I mean, if you come from a corporate background or were a tax lawyer, which his dad, I guess, was and is, that there wasn't more, I don't know, structure to the organization. I mean, the dichotomy between what people thought pre -petition, what John Ray sort of said post -petition and now some of the revelations coming out about the pre -petition activity. I mean, it's just kind of amazing to think about people that might have been a more corporate background and saying like, if the business was so profitable, why were you cutting corners? To be fair to these guys, like in the light of day, sunlight of bankruptcy court, which as people in bankruptcy say, like my parents would say, the last place you want to be as a criminal is in bankruptcy court because there's so much sunlight and everything. Everything gets scrutinized. To be fair to people, sometimes the stuff gets overly scrutinized and they cherry pick stuff that went on. But it seems pretty damning, some of the stuff and there's, let's see what the responses will be. I mean, it's good for the estate and it's good for creditors because I'm sure they want to see sort of retribution. But in terms of recoveries, I don't think it's going to be incredibly meaningful, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. I mean, that's, I don't know, maybe two months of bankruptcy fees. And so, earlier when we were talking about like how some of the things are particularly damning, like if you were to kind of say, FTX will win in court for these reasons, like which were the particular acts that you think probably will put things over the edge? Oh yeah. I think almost all the stuff though, the win on the merits of the fraudulent conveyance. I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming with funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Like if money was given to a charity, can you actually go and get it back? Like meaning, is it there? Has it been spent kind of stuff? And you can only squeeze whatever rocked so hard. So the question will be, what is the real estate in the Bahamas worth? The 10 million bucks or whatever that was gifted to them, where did that money end up going? Can they trace it? So, these things cost money to do and then the question is like, how much of an effort do you want to make? And of course, all that can be stopped by a criminal investigation, which there isn't a complaint, but clearly some of the activity could be considered criminal. And I think, I won't pretend to be a criminal lawyer or a lawyer at all, but when you're bringing lawsuits, I mean, basically these are kind of like preponderance of evidence standards versus like higher standards that you might have for criminal complaints. So, it's easier for John Ray to like stitch together some stuff they know and slap an AP and sue these guys, but it's a little harder from a criminal side. But all of it, just facially, I mean, of course, as my lawyer likes to tell me, like, facts matter Thomas. So, if more discovery happens than they take discovery, we'll see. But on the face of it, I mean, it looks pretty obvious that it's sort of slam dunk. Just the question is what they'll actually be able to recover. Yeah, I think one of the ones that stuck out at me, simply because I could very easily imagine myself in a similar position with my own parents and I could just picture what my mother would say. And it was when they purchased the Bahamas property and everything was just getting billed or allegedly in the complaint to FTX. And the parents didn't even make an attempt to pay to furnish their home themselves. And I could just imagine if something similar was happening with my mother, she would be like, wait, is this okay that we're doing this? Like, you know, she would have so many questions about the money and like what was okay, what was kosher, what was not. Like, I could just practically hear her in my head. But at least, you know, from what the complaint described, it didn't feel at all like the parents had any of those qualms. So that was... Yeah, it wasn't 100 % owner of FTX. So it is bizarre that those red flags wouldn't have been, or people wouldn't have been like, hey, I know that you think this is okay, but I don't. Like someone would have said something, maybe they thought it was a drop in the ocean, but if FTX was so wildly profitable and Alameda was so wildly profitable, they didn't need to cut in corners and have them picking up the checks. I mean, it would have been easy for Sam to just be like, no, I'm picking this up personally or something. Well, one thing that I also noticed is that the document hedges its language saying things like, quote, Banquin and Freed either knew or ignored bright red flags revealing that SPF and other insiders were orchestrating the scheme. And again, you know, I saw later again, it was like, they either knew or blatantly ignored. So, yes. Right. That's because the standard for these civil cases is much lower. You know, like if you were trying to criminally try them, you'd have to like really show that they knew because they're going to say they didn't know, they didn't know, right. But the standard for like breach of fiduciary duty or, you know, kind of unjust enrichment, it's a much lower standard. All you have to basically show is a reasonable person should have known, you know. Oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So, that's why they keep saying that. So, you're saying – So, basically, they don't know whether or not they knew, but it doesn't matter for what they're trying to do. Is that what you're saying? I will respectfully say that I'm not a lawyer, but a stress investor and what people usually say – is the standard is usually what a reasonable person should have known, steps a reasonable person should have taken, best practices that a board should have taken. So, like a board of directors, if somebody runs off with money in a company, they don't have to necessarily show that they knew the person stole the money, but did they take any steps a reasonable person would have taken to like verify that the money was there or that the person wasn't absconding with money or whatever. So, it's this reasonable person standard that I think you trigger under Delaware and there are a lot of jurisdictions for breach of fiduciary duty or breach of loyalty, duty of care that you have, mainly in the boardroom, but also I think as a C -suite executive and it sounds like he was sort of melding between the two. So, basically, yeah, they're just trying to meet that standard for their purposes. They don't need to go beyond. And Barbara Fried, you know, also – so, as far as I understand from reading this, you know, Sam Pinkman was definitely involved more in the day -to -day, you know, he was often listed with FTX management. He could make executive decisions on his own at one point saying, oh, I'm just going to make this decision without Sam, like we don't need to involve him, that kind of thing. So, Barbara Fried was not involved at that level. However, it did say that she was a key influence on the campaign donations and I wondered what your takeaway was in that regard in terms of, you know, her involvement there. campaign finance fraud. Yeah, I don't have too much to say other than it's just bizarre that, you know, so many corners were cut in regards to stuff. I don't have a real view on – again, it's like it helps them build a story that they can, you know, just slam dunk, take back any money that was taken out of the estate at any point in the last couple of years by Barbara and the husband. But I don't think that – I don't have a real view on that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as far as I understand, I don't think they're married, they're domestic partners. Just to clarify, yeah. All right. So, in a moment, we're going to talk about what the consequences could be after, you know, from this document. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? 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WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "Match" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Thunderstorms associated with it far so but plenty of soaking rain as we have been expecting here with this tropical storm. 840 on W -T -O -P. It's money news at 10 and 40. Pass the hour. This is a Bloomberg Money Minute. It's getting more expensive to run a McDonald's. The company says US and Canadian franchise owners who either open new restaurants or over take company existing -owned locales will have to pay Mickey D's five percent of the sales. That's up from four percent. Existing franchise locations will not be affected and there will be few exceptions such as those willing to sign 20 -year franchise agreements. Game on. Microsoft's 69 billion dollar acquisition of game maker Activision Blizzard looks set to clear its final regulatory hurdle opening the door for the deal to clear. UK antitrust regulators say Microsoft's taken the steps it needs to address their concerns. The two sides hope to close the deal next month. And tinder is rolling out an ultra premium subscription tier for some of its dating app users. For $499 a month, VIP users gain access to features like exclusive searching VIP matching and conversations that are currently available with existing paid plans. It was another down day on Wall Street to close out the week. The Dow fell 107 points, the Nasdaq lost 12, the S &P fell 10. From the Bloomberg newsroom, I'm Erica Herskowitz on the OP. And we bring you money news every half hour at 10 and 40. And we're brought to you by PenFed, great rates for everyone. By the way, pretty lousy week on Wall Street as well. The Dow actually had it the best. It was down 1%, Nasdaq 3 .5 % lower, S &P down 3%. That is for the week on Wall Street. People were supposed to get their chance to swim in the Anacostia River this weekend for the first time in 50 years. Stormy weather has prompted organizers of the Anacostia River splash event to postpone that dip. There are still ways other you can enjoy the river at least through mid -November. Take a boat ride with the Anacostia River explorers and they will point out landmarks and the many birds that make their home on the river. We got another heron as a clock on the bank. The free boat tours are partially funded through the DC Department of Energy and the Environment and you. Revenues from bag fees charged at DC stores go towards the programming. DC native Kim Davis was raised going to parks in the area but had never been on the Anacostia River until she hopped aboard the boat. I didn't think I
HASHR8
A highlight from Auradines 4nm Bitcoin Miner w/ Barun Kar and Rajiv Khemani
"Welcome back to The Mining Pod. On today's show, we're joined by Auradine, a new Bitcoin mining ESIC manufacturer coming to market. We talk about the unit specs, the team behind the machine, and how they expect to compete in an ever -crowded market. Did you know that you can make more money by merge mining other networks? Check out MakeMoreMoneyMining .com for information on BIPs 300 and 301, a proposal to bring more revenue to Bitcoin miners through sidechains and merge mining, called DriveChains. Increase your mining revenues and learn more about participating in Bitcoin governance by visiting MakeMoreMoneyMining .com. Are you a miner who wants to activate Bitcoin improvements? Check out Activation .Watch. See what Bitcoin improvements the Bitcoin community, developers, and miners are considering and show support by signaling for one of many BIPs up for consideration. Activation .Watch. Filecoin's mission is to create a decentralized, efficient, and robust storage infrastructure for humanity's information. Join the Filecoin Foundation team October 3 -5 for PhilVegas, the first major Filecoin community event in North America in 2023, to explore how to adapt data storage for an AI -centric future. Participate in conversations and hear keynotes focused on the importance of data integrity in the world of artificial intelligence. Register to attend and learn more at phil -vegas .io and make sure to use promo code miningpod. Hey MiningPod, I'm Lee Bratcher, President of the Texas Blockchain Council. The Texas Blockchain Summit is now the North American Blockchain Summit. The same emphasis on policy, energy, and Bitcoin mining, but now expanded by working with our partners across the country. We've got great sponsors lined up like Riot, Marathon, GDA, CleanSpark, BitDeer, Lantium, Cormant, Compass, HTS, Crypto Power, Priority Power, Sunoda, and many more. Solidify your trust in the world of artificial intelligence and the world of artificial intelligence. We'll see you there. Hello, welcome back to the MiningPod. I'm Will Foxley, joined today by Rajeev and Varun from Auradine. Thank you so much for joining today. We're really excited to talk about the new ASIC product you guys are bringing to the market. How are you guys doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us, Will. Definitely. You know, the market's clamoring to know more about you guys. The first time I heard about you was from someone who reads into Marathon Digital's deep SEC letters that they put out there, their filings. And they're like, what is this company Auradine? What's going on with this? And people are wondering about it. And then we found out this summer, you guys were public, you guys raised $81 million and there's a lot of momentum around the product you guys are bringing to market. So that's why we're having you on the show today because people have a lot of questions. I'm sure you guys are excited to start producing a new miner for the Bitcoin mining market. So let's just start there. If we could get an intro for both you guys, like your past backgrounds, what Auradine is doing, and then also on the product. My name is Rajeev Kimani. I am a Silicon Valley technology executive and entrepreneur. I've been in Silicon Valley for 30 plus years. Have been involved in multiple successful startup companies, as well as being a C -level executive in public companies. My background is in computer science and engineering, and then also an MBA from Stanford. And this is my fourth startup that we believe is going to be bigger and better than those other companies before this. Yeah, my name is Barun Kaur. So my last company was Palo Alto Networks. I was in the founding team and did two more startups before that. And I started my career at Motorola after I finished my PhD. Awesome. Thanks for that background. Fortune just did a great piece on you guys for like detailing the company. And it started from the question like, how did this company raise $81 million just like on the background here? And maybe you guys have some disagreements with that, but that aside, I like the ending of the whole fortune piece, which we'll link in the show notes, which is, and you guys are coming into a crowded market and raise a lot of money based on your background, based on the things that you guys have built before and as exited from successfully. So with that being said, let's talk about Auradine, the product that you guys are bringing to market and where you see it fitting into the competition landscape. Yeah, we started Auradine with a big vision and the vision was to build an infrastructure company for the next generation of the web infrastructure. And we believe that blockchain AI and privacy are fundamental building blocks that will really revolutionize how we all work and play. And we think that as we started to look at these spaces, we started with blockchain Bitcoin being the biggest blockchain and the most successful that there is. And then during that process, we connected with marathon. And what we said is, what can we do that's innovative and different than what has existed before us. And prior to us, as you know, what has happened is that Bitcoin mining has gone from CPU's to GPU's to ASICs. And then all of the ASIC providers have moved, have essentially been Chinese companies. And so what we saw was two things. One is that we need to provide a very robust US supplier of this technology, which is very important, especially for US and North American miners in general. So that was a very important aspect. But the second aspect is, was to do something that is much more symbiotic and constructive for the energy ecosystem. And so we have done a lot of innovation in bringing out this product, which is our very first product. It's the first four nanometer ASIC in the world. And we've executed extremely fast when people look at us that literally within from start to getting a product out in the market is not much greater than a year. But we have executed extremely fast on this. As you can imagine, we have an amazing roadmap in front of us. And we have some amazing capabilities in our first product. So we are super excited to bring the Teraflux mining product line to market. Awesome. Yeah. So it's kind of going on that whole line. Tell me a little bit about like the market you guys are building in. I noticed that you guys are building within the US, as opposed to Bitmain and others who are building mostly out of East Asia. Bitmain of course has moved its facilities a lot of times and they're mostly out of Malaysia. But then even like the chips themselves are coming out of Taiwan or in the case of MicroBT, they're coming out of South Korea. Tell me about your guys' supply chain, where you guys get your ASIC parts and how you guys choose to manufacture your whole machine. Yes. So I'll give an overview and Varun can add to it. But essentially, well, first of all, we are a US company. So we are a US incorporated company. Secondarily, the chip design is entirely done in the US. So we are based in Silicon Valley. All of our engineers are based here. So that's a second very important piece of it. So all of the intellectual property, the second. The third thing that we are doing is that we are, in terms of the foundries, we are working with the leading foundries. But what we paid extra attention to is that whatever technology that we use has a manufacturing plant in the United States. Now, turns out the two leading foundries, TSMC and Samsung, both have US manufacturing locations. And we wanted to make sure that those chips could be manufactured in the US. Very, very important aspect for us. And so, you know, even though some of the Chinese companies have moved to other parts, the reality is that the US has restrictions about access to leading edge process technology. There are tariffs. Are those companies bypassing tariffs using certain corporate models or not? Those are questions that are yet to be answered completely. But that's something that we have to do that for the US vendors. Awesome. Yeah. So let's go into the product itself a little bit more. And I like what you noted about like the difference of tariff restrictions. I think the geopolitical issue with ASIC importation itself is an under discussed topic. So from what we're seeing from public numbers right now, it looks like you guys released 22 joules per tariff for this machine with a plus or minus 8%. Curious a little bit more about some of these details. You guys can take this question as you want. Is this on the chip level or the system level? What do you think about that 8 % deviation from the 22 joules per tariff hash? Is that like higher or lower than you're seeing from competitors? And then from there, let's talk about the four nanometer chip that you guys are working on. Yeah. So this is the first product is four nanometers. The specs that we've done are at a system level, not at a chip level, because at the end of the day, customers care about system level specs. And then the plus or minus 8%, what happens is when you're in the leading edge process technology node and you're building the silicon, when you're manufacturing the silicon, there's a deviation in the capabilities of the silicon. And so that is really to capture that. Now, in terms of our competitors, we've seen numbers that are plus or minus five, and actually in other cases, plus or minus 10 % as well. Now we are early in the game. So as we get more and more learnings from building larger quantities of products, we can refine those numbers, make it a little more tighter. We may be able to improve some of these efficiency numbers as well, but we are coming from the point of view of being somewhat conservative. Other vendors before us have tried to be aggressive and then have missed expectations. And we hear that from customers. And so our goal based on our prior track records is to try to see if we can be somewhat conservative and delight people on the upside. So that's our philosophy. Barun, anything? No, I think that's... Great. I don't know if you guys have released these numbers and it'd be curious to see if you have or have not, but hash rate and then power at the wall. Have you guys discussed those publicly yet? Yeah, the hash rates, you know what, the world before our product, which is up till now, is that typically people give you a miner that runs at a certain terahash rate and has a certain efficiency. And what happens is that today, if you want to be able to go up and down, people refer to that as overclock or underclock. That requires either a firmware change or a different firmware, or you have to change the control board, or you have to write software on top of it to turn on and off these systems very kludgy. It's really, I would say it's still in the dark ages, so to speak, relative to the rest of the technology infrastructure. And that's because Bitcoin came from being more of a hobbyist product to the data center scale product. And it has done a bunch of batch work along the way. What we have in our systems is we have built in from the ground up the capability to go up and down in terahash rates, all the way from zero to 185 in our air -cooled systems, in our immersion systems to much higher numbers, some of which we haven't disclosed. And you can do that very fast. And that's super important for people who want to work with energy partners to bring down energy consumption and take advantage of some of those curtailment related economics that we get in a very rapid timeframe. So we have all of those capabilities built into the system. We refer to that as energy tune. It's patented technology. And I think people are going to love it when they see it. So we've done that. But in addition, what we've also done is we've made sure that these systems keep operating at high temperature ranges, which again is critical, as you know, in certain parts of the country, temperatures are getting hotter than they used to be, and miners are shut down for 10, 20, 30 percent of the time. In our case, it will keep running and will keep hashing and keep providing the economics to the miners. Awesome. For the four nanometer part, I want to go back to that. The energy efficiency, there's this general idea that as we go down to the size of the node from eight to seven to six to five to four, it's supposed to become more energy efficient. Tell me a little bit about that and energy efficiencies you guys are capturing within your new model and also how it compares to the market as of now. Yeah. So today, most of the products that are shipping are in five nanometer or older process nodes. To achieve energy efficiency, you do need leading edge process technology. In addition, what you also need is design and architecture to enable that. These Bitcoin mining systems run at very, very low voltages, and to make that work at very low voltages relative to every other product is a complex engineering and technology effort. And so we have both of those things in motion. As I said, we started the company literally a year and a half ago, and we have brought to market a product in record time, matching the best in class that exists in the world today. We have more tricks up our sleeve as we bring additional products to the world at Halfing and beyond. And we believe we are going to be the best in the world, if not within plus or minus a few percent of the best in the world. Both now as well as we go forward. So super confident of that. Right now, as you know, the world is in kind of the 21 plus or minus in terms of deployments. We think it's going to get much better than here. But when we talk to customers, we see there are certain customers that are very sensitive in cost of the miners. Others are more sensitive in the efficiency. But both of them care extremely about the variability and the energy tune features, which we think is going to become a must have requirement going forward. So yeah, let's talk about the auto tune features that you guys have put into this. From my understanding, there's a patent around this. How do you guys look at this technology compared to some of the other technologies that are out there? I mean, there's definitely lots of different firmware options for controlling a miner and controlling its temperature setting. What are you guys sort of doing different when you're building this unit holistically? Yeah, very different. Very different than anything that has been done before. So in the past, typically at a single miner level, you could actually run it at a certain terahash rate or shut down the miner, put it in sleep mode. Then more recently, people have started to put together an eco mode, if you will. That's the state of the art that exists today. And what people have tried to do is solve some of these fundamental problems through putting software level turning on and off of the miners. Not the most efficient way to do it. What we have done it is things that are inside a miner. And so we have these capabilities that are unique, very different than anything else that's been done before, where inside the miner through API calls, the hardware is able to change and adjust the various terahash rates and so forth. And what all you do is you just give all these inputs to the miner, and the miner figures out how to do it and does it, rather than trying to do it in a crudgy fashion outside through some software mechanisms. So that's very different, and that's where we have a patent for the energy tune and autotune capabilities. As you might expect, things like Bitcoin price, energy cost, transaction fees, temperature, all of those are inputs into trying to figure out what is the optimal point for the miner to run. More and more variables are coming into the picture. And to top it off also, autotune has the ability to go to tens of thousands of miners and be able to do an energy tune on each of them at the get -go. And we are trying to get to a point where we can do it in a few seconds so that it is in line with customer requirements where curtailment can happen at that short period of time. Now, there's a distinct difference between... So the autotune is one feature and there's the energy tune is another feature. Now, the energy tune also to couple with what Rajeev mentioned, we are using a machine learning techniques to do dynamic voltage frequency scaling so that each chip can be tuned to get to the optimal joules per terahash. Are you a retail or institutional investor interested in Bitcoin mining companies? The MinerMag brings you free data and analysis from all major NASDAQ listed Bitcoin mining operations to know who stands out. Check out visualized metrics and data dependent stories at theminermag .com. Filecoin's mission is to create decentralized efficient and robust storage infrastructure for humanities information. Join the Filecoin Foundation team October 3rd through 5th for PhilVegas, the first major Filecoin community event in North America in 2023 to explore how to adapt data storage for an AI centric future. Participate in conversations and hear keynotes focused on the importance of data integrity in the world of artificial intelligence. Register to attend and learn more at phil -vegas .io and make sure to use promo code miningpod. Did you know that you can make more money by merge mining other networks? Check out makemoremoneymining .com for information on BIPs 300 and 301, a proposal to bring more revenue to Bitcoin miners through sidechains and merge mining called DriveChains. Increase your mining revenues and learn more about participating in Bitcoin governance by visiting makemoremoneymining .com. Are you a miner who wants to activate Bitcoin improvements? Check out activation .watch, see what Bitcoin improvements the Bitcoin community, developers, and miners are considering, and show support by signaling from one of many BIPs up for consideration.
Bloomberg Business of Sports
Fresh update on "match" discussed on Bloomberg Business of Sports
"Because that is ultimately what we care so much about when it comes to sports is being a fan of the same team or, you know, having that moment, that collective moment. How do you balance those things in an age where technology makes so much possible? It does make so much possible. And there is a balance there. There are some of the traditional sports fans that don't want to see a whole lot of change, but we have a younger generation that is not as inclined to sit there and watch an entire match. They actually want it to be more interactive. They want to have polls in there. They want to be watching with friends. They want to have it be more of a gamified experience. And again, going back to another interesting startup in our current cohort, FanFest. And they did an amazing opportunity and were really instrumental in helping us bring Premier League on board. We paired them up with Sky Sports. And what FanFest allows you to do is create interactive TV shows. So we leaned into the talent base that Sky has with their fantasy football team. And they did a couple of pre -show events. And then fans could come in from anywhere and talk about why they loved their club and who they thought were going to win and who played right and who made the right calls. And what was interesting was that that took place during a Real Madrid and Manchester match that we actually did not have the life force. We normally would not have had a voice in that match. But we were able to give our fans a voice in there with our talent. That was Vice President of Startup Partnerships and Head of Comcast's NBCU Sports Tech, Jenna Karath. Be sure to stick around because we have a lot more of our conversation coming up next on the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world. When you get your news from Bloomberg, you don't just the get story. You get the story behind the story. How your EV's battery may not be as green as it seems, why a decrease in global birth rates could send countries scrambling to increase immigration. You get context. Context changes how you see things, how you change things, because context changes everything. Go to Bloomberg together. We have the opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive future. At the Bloomberg New Economy
Unchained
A highlight from Why FTX Might Try to Claw Back Funds From Retail Customers- Ep. 547
"I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming to lift funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the September 22nd, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by Thales, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Thomas Brazile, founder of 117 Partners. Welcome, Thomas. Hey, Laura. Good to see you again. This week, FTX sued Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried, alleging that Bankman was intimately involved in a number of the allegedly fraudulent schemes such as silencing someone who threatened to expose the alleged FTX fraud, the purchase of property in the Bahamas. Barbara Fried encouraged the use of strong donors as campaign finance laws, or allegedly, and both were accused generally of either knowing or ignoring the red flags that FTX was in solvent. Was this development surprising or expected? Thanks for having me on, Laura. Good to see you, as always. Was it surprising? No, I don't think it was that surprising. I think what was in the lawsuits in bankruptcy referred to as adversary proceeding, but what was seen in the adversary proceeding was probably a bit shocking, the actual details. But I think people knew that they were pretty involved. And I think that was some of the heat they were getting post him getting a criminal complaint against him was that, you know, why is he hanging out with his parents, weren't they involved in a lot of parts of the business, and people were saying things like that. I don't think it's that unexpected. People I think long knew that there were some real estate transactions where they were gifted or given some certain real estate in the Bahamas. But to see it all laid out in the complaint or I should say in the adversary proceeding was interesting, you know. And yeah. Which items in particular really struck you? I guess it's the involvement like in the actual day -to -day stuff. I mean, if you come from a corporate background or were a tax lawyer, which is that I guess was is, and that there wasn't more, I don't know, structure to the organization. I mean, you know, the dichotomy between what people thought pre -petition, what John Ray sort of said post -petition, and now some of the revelations coming out about the pre -petition activity. I mean, it's just kind of amazing to think about people that might have been a more corporate background and saying like, if the business was so profitable, why were you cutting corners? And, you know, to be fair to these guys, like in the, you know, in the light of day, sunlight of bankruptcy court, which as, you know, people in bankruptcy say, like my parents would say, like, the last place you want to be as a criminal is in bankruptcy court because there's so much sunlight and everything, you know, everything is good scrutinized. And to be fair to people, sometimes the stuff gets overly scrutinized and they cherry pick stuff that went on. But it seems pretty damning, some of the stuff and, you know, let's see what the responses will be. I mean, it's good for the estate and it's good for creditors because I'm sure they want to see, you know, sort of retribution. But in terms of recoveries, I don't think it's going to be incredibly meaningful, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. I mean, that's, I don't know, maybe two months of bankruptcy fees. And so, you know, earlier when we were talking about like how some of the things are particularly damning, like if you were to kind of say, FTX will win in court, you know, for these reasons, like which were the particular acts that you think probably will put things over the edge? Oh, yeah. I think almost all the stuff though, they'll win on the merits of the fraudulent conveyance. I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming with funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Like if money was given to a charity, can you actually go and get it back? Like meaning, is it there? Has it been spent kind of stuff? And you know, you can only squeeze a, you know, whatever, rock so hard. So the question will be, you know, what is the real estate in the Bahamas worth? The 10 million bucks or whatever that was gifted to them, where did that money end up going? Can they trace it? So these things cost money to do and then the question is like, how much of an effort do you want to make? And of course, you know, all that can be stopped by a criminal investigation, which there isn't a complaint, but clearly some of the activity could be considered criminal. And I think, you know, I won't pretend to be a criminal lawyer or a lawyer at all, but when you're bringing lawsuits, I mean, basically these are kind of like preponderance of evidence standards versus like, you know, higher standards that you might have for criminal complaints. So it's easier for John Ray to like stitch together some stuff they know and slap an AP and sue these guys. But it's a little harder from the criminal side. But all of it, just on facially, I mean, of course, as my lawyer likes to tell me, like, you know, facts matter, Thomas. So it is more discovery happens than they take discovery. We'll see. But on the face of it, I mean, it looks pretty, pretty obvious that it's sort of slam dunk. Just the question is what they'll actually be able to recover. Yeah. I think one of the ones that stuck out at me simply because I could very easily imagine myself in a similar position with my own parents and I could just picture what my mother would say. And it was when they purchased the Bahamas property and everything was just getting billed or allegedly in the complaint to FTX. And the parents didn't even make an attempt to pay to furnish their home themselves. And I could just imagine something similar was happening with my mother. She would be like, wait, is this OK that we're doing this? Like, you know, she would have so many questions about the money and like what was OK, what was kosher, what was not. Like, I could just practically hear her in my head. But at least, you know, from what the complaint described, it didn't feel at all like the parents had any of those qualms. So that was. Yeah. It wasn't 100 percent owner of FTX. So it is bizarre that those red flags wouldn't have been or people wouldn't have been like, hey, I know that you think this is OK, but I don't like someone would have said something. Maybe they thought it was a drop in the ocean. But if FTX is so wildly profitable, I mean, it was so wildly profitable, they didn't need to cut in corners and have them picking up the checks. I mean, it would have been easy for Sam to just be like, no, I'm picking this up personally or something. Well, one thing that I also notice is that the document hedges its language, saying things like, quote, Banquin and Freed either knew or ignored bright red flags, revealing that SPF and other insiders were orchestrating the scheme. And again, you know, I saw later again, it was like they either knew or blatantly ignored. So right. Yes. That's because the standard for these civil cases is much lower. You know, like if you were trying to criminally try them, you'd have to like really show that they knew because they're going to say they didn't know, they didn't know, right? But the standard for breach of fiduciary duty or unjust enrichment, it's a much lower standard. All you have to basically show is a reasonable person should have known, you know? Oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So that's why I keep saying that. So you're saying, so basically they don't know whether or not they knew, but it doesn't matter for what they're trying to do. Is that what you're saying? I will respectfully say that I'm not a lawyer, but a stress investor. And what people usually say is the standard is usually what a reasonable person should have known, steps a reasonable person should have taken, best practices that a board should have taken. So like a board of director, if somebody runs off with money in a company, they don't have to necessarily show that they knew the person stole the money, but did they take any steps a reasonable person would have taken to like verify that the money was there, that the person wasn't absconding with money or whatever. So it's just this reasonable person standard that I think you trigger under Delaware and under a lot of jurisdictions for breach of fiduciary duty or breach of loyalty, duty of care that you have, mainly in the boardroom, but also I think as a C -suite executive and it sounds like he was sort of melding between the two. So basically, yeah, they're just trying to meet that standard for their purposes. They don't need to go beyond. And Barbara Fried, you know, also, so as far as I understand from reading this, you know, Sam Pinkman was definitely involved more in the day to day. You know, he was often listed with FTX management. He you know, could make executive decisions on his own at one point saying, oh, I'm just going to make this decision without Sam, like we don't need to involve him, that kind of thing. So Barbara Fried was not involved at that level. However, it did say that she was a key influence on the campaign donations. And I wondered what your takeaway was in that regard in terms of, you know, her involvement there. Campaign finance fraud? Yeah. Again, I don't have too much to say other than it's just bizarre that, you know, so many corners were cut in regards to stuff. I don't have a real view on. Again, it's like it helps them build a story that they can, you know, just slam dunk, take back any money that was taken out of the estate at any point in the last couple of years by Barbara and the husband. But I don't think that I don't have a real view on that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as far as I understand, I don't think they're married. They're domestic partners. Just to clarify. Yeah. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about what the consequences could be after, you know, from this document. But first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Easy to use token grant award templates, vesting tracking via online dashboard, tax withholding integration with payroll, automated distributions, great employee experience. Make it simple with Toku. Learn more at toku .com slash Unchained.
Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
Fresh "Match" from Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
"Cards do something awesome. At the end of your first year they automatically the cash double back all you've earned. That's right everything you've earned doubled. See terms and check it out for yourself at discover .com slash match. Your next Northwest traffic at 134. Our forecast now sponsored by Northwest Crawl Space Services. Weather today is mostly sunny for the region but still it's been fairly hazy for a lot of us around the Central Sound. Tomorrow we're gonna see it all change we're not gonna be much warmer than the mid 60s seeing probably some rain by afternoon and staying cloudy starting Saturday and lasting all the way through the middle of next week. Right now in the city it's hazy sunshine that we see overhead and we're sitting at 69 degrees. Northwest news time 126. Lizzo being sued
Mutually CoDopendent
A highlight from Renee and Their Labels
"Hey guys, welcome to Mutually Codependent, I'm Jen. And I'm Adam. And today we have a very special guest. Welcome Renee to the show. Hello. Hello. Hello. Should we get a little button so we could have like applause? Yeah, a little soundboard. Yeah, yeah. It's lonely in my head without that stuff. It's much quieter with meds. So Renee is the store manager for our Round Rock store. They are affiliated with our store. So it's not just a random person, but that's cool. It would be weird. Store manager Round Rock, how long? It's been over a year, April. April is a year late manager being here. Oh, being manager. No, I made manager in December last year. Yeah. So when I started working from home. Yeah. It was around that time. But you've been with us a year and a half. Yeah. Yeah. It's goes by so fast these days. I really felt like the other day was just like, oh, it's Renee's one year anniversary. No, it's that's a while away now. I think you started the end of March. So there's the strain of the show so that we have the the justification for the smoking, which I already started. Hold on. Hold on. I got. Oh, that was the box of matches falling. Renee's too Renee's good for the lighters. I taste the butane. I don't know how to also describe it. I had a friend who turned me on to using matches. You wait for the little little bulb to burn. You wait till it gets to the wood and it's virtually tasteless. So I started using matches a lot more since you came over the first time. But I did think that it was funny because we had this like disco. Oh, yeah, you can taste the butane. I'm like, oh, I know what I'd like to do to avoid the taste of butane in my mouth. I'd like to make sure there's at least four or five seconds of very sharp sulfur in my nose before. Because because that's better. I mean, what is these days? What is what is? I just always I make the mistake of lighting the match when it's right under my nose. So if I were to just fix that, it's it's the sort of you try. You strike it away from yourself. I had to learn the hard way to where I was just like, whoo. Shit. Well, we aren't supposed to like the smell of matches lighting. Well, not right under your nose and not as a replacement for the subtle taste of butane. I mean, but I think it's like cilantro. If you taste it, you taste it. If you don't, you don't. So I'm not judging. I'm just being a shit. I mean, when you're not. So what we're what we're smoking straight to the show, the strain of the show today is jelly rancher. Um, jelly rancher. This is brought to you by actually, I think this is hemp living. Hemp living. There we go. It's one of the brands that we sell in the store and it is available online, I believe, as well. Jelly rancher is known as a sativa. That is 26 percent THC, a considered a sativa dominant hybrid. It's been described as happy, giggly, focused feeling with notes of berries and citrus. Beta -cariophalina is the main terpene, which is the same terpene that's in black pepper and cinnamon. It's it's a little peppery. Did you just fucking? I just dropped my cherry on the. You just dumped your cherry into the ashtray. I didn't mean to. Incense, incense. So scoop it up. Scoop it up. I don't know if that's possible. So don't don't use your finger. We have tools. We're humans. We have a lot of lead. If you know that one dies, you can just like your pre -roll. We'll probably do that. Stoners. Hey, one problem at a time. Yeah, if anything, we're we're true engineers. True engineers. Well, you said did I show you the pictures of those like super old like methods of smoking? No, that I found when I was doing the research for the Bastrop thing. No, it's pretty fucking cool. Yeah, it's basically they they carved out a hole in a. Like a like a log, I guess. And they would heat up rocks and put the rocks on the cannabis, so they'd stuff the hole full of cannabis. Like imagine it was like, I don't know, a couple inches in diameter. Like golf ball would fit in it. Right. And it was like a segment of a branch with the golf ball size hole pulled out of it. Shove a bunch of weed in there and then take stones that were heated from the fire and drop them on top. Yeah. So they were literally vaping it. Yeah. It was like old old school vaping technique. Does remind me of the time when I was actually first introduced to weed. It was at a party. And they smoked through an apple. I've done that. Yeah, they cut a hole top and bottom, put some foil on it and and went to town. I mean, I didn't smoke because I was a goody two shoes back then. But, you know, we change. We evolve. Yeah. You know, the thing about people is we can change our beliefs based on our experiences. Yeah. Truly pattern seeking if we choose to. I saw a guy in TikTok the other day smoke weed out of a headrest from a car and a car like still. Yes. And so, yeah, like he took it off. He opened he put he put his weed like down the hole of the metal on one side. Like it was his joint. So he put his joint down one side, like down. And then he just I don't something how he like breathed in through the other side and he was able to smoke. How carcinogens many do you think it was so stupid? So the headrest, oh, the head rest of your car, pulling off the headdress the two holes are and using the actual chair itself, because that sounds like a great idea to be a car made in the 70s full of asbestos. His friend was like, if you were a loved one who suffers from mesothelioma, I miss my popcorn ceilings, OK? Oh, we have popcorn ceiling looked up, actually. So we have modern popcorn ceiling. So it's not as best as terrible. I just think it's fine. I just see you look up as soon as I say that. Oh, somebody was talking about it before and she was like, was it Jackie telling us to get rid of it? I don't know. You got to get rid of your popcorn. I was like, no, then it echoes. And they're like, yeah, but it's OK. No, it's not. No, we're good. We don't own this house. So we put together a list of things to talk about. Yeah, I guess we could read it. Well, we could just kind of go through it. Yeah, we could keep the audience on edge. Keep them on edge. Hey, are you on edge? Stormy. Stormy. Lily Reagan.
Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
Fresh "Match" from Morning News with Manda Factor and Gregg Hersholt
"Sports and Regenerative Medicine. Book your consultation at .com. www .drmd At Carpet Liquidators, our warehouses are full of brand -name carpet and flooring, like Mohawk SmartStrand ForeverClean. During September, to help us support National Preparedness Month, purchase any flooring product and we'll donate 10 % on select retail sales to Northwest Disaster Search Dogs and Cascadia Search Dogs. 10 % to help train search and rescue dogs to find the lost and missing. Carpet Liquidators, locally owned since 1988 with seven western Washington locations. And now, open At EC. Muckleshoot, a great risk can bring a great reward. Each week, rewards members have a chance at thousands in cash, during risk or reward drawings. Three players can win guaranteed cash every hour or risk it for a grand prize of 25 grand, p .m. Come in, have fun. It's 1 24 Northwest News Radio your home for breaking news and traffic and weather every 10 minutes On the fours, here's Kimmy Klein Eastside. We had an earlier crash south on 4 0 5 in Northeast 44. That's been cleared, but it's slow from just south of 5 20 is taking drivers about 35 minutes to get from Bellevue to Renton. Even westbound 90 got really busy too from pretty much the Mercer Island laid across towards I -5. Southbound 5 is heavy into Seattle, but getting at Northgate all the way towards I I -90. Not too bad though so far around Tukwila and Federal Way. Some minor delays in Olympia, South on A5 near Pacific Avenue and we are starting to see some slow spots develop on North and I -5 not only in Seattle around the Michigan curb but right at the Kingston and Snohomish County line just passing the Alderwood Mall and in Everett around 41st towards Marine View Drive. We also road have some work happening today if you're headed towards Bellingham near Lake Samish on North and I -5 that's taking up your center lane causing some extra traffic too. The support sponsored by Discover. Discover credit cards do something awesome. At the end of your first year they automatically the cash double back all you've earned. That's right everything you've earned doubled. See terms and check it out for yourself at discover .com slash match. Your next Northwest traffic at 134. Our forecast now sponsored by Northwest Crawl Space Services. Weather today is mostly sunny for the region but still it's been fairly
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from MAJOR Mt. Gox Update! (Bitcoin Sell Date Delayed)
"Let's discover some crypto news today. September 21st, it's 1130 AM because we always start on time here, and we got Drew and AJ on the ones and twos. How are you two doing? I'm doing great. Nice white tee, DZ. Nice white tee. Yeah, thank you. Well, I got the V. You got the regular, right? Yeah, you got the regular. Alright, so tomorrow, I'm going to have a deeper V, okay? We were just talking before the show. I want such a deep V that Salt Bae would be embarrassed. He would turn beet red from wearing the deep V, so maybe we have to get it that cut. Drew, your wife actually makes clothing. Will she make a custom deep V for you so we can match? This is absolutely going to happen. Top D with the deep V. Yours has to be in camo. Alright, guys, we're going to talk about Jerome Powell, some of the remarks after. They didn't change the rate hikes, what they mean. Also, we got Bitcoin at Mt. Gox has been moved. What's going on with that? When are these coins going to hit the market? When is this Mt. Gox Bitcoin going to hit the market? Is it going to dump Bitcoin's prices? Is it going down 10K, 1K? So we're going to talk about that as well. We got to talk about Maxine Waters and X potentially turn into a payments platform. Linda Yaccarino, the CEO, tweeted out something last night. We're going to look at that as well. And we got some XRP news. It's going to be a great episode, so please hit that like button, everybody. Are you all feeling good? Are we feeling red? You know, the market's down, but I still feel pretty good. You feeling good? I'm feeling good. Alright. Let's go to blue. Alright, alright. We're also going to have charts with Kelly at the end, too, so it's towards the beginning. Alright, well, let's talk about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. He spoke at a critical press conference after the interest rates decision. Here are the details. We're just going to break down some of the key takeaways. As expected, they did not increase the interest rate, kept it constant between 5 .25 and 5 .5. And here are the important excerpts from Powell's statement, everybody. We cannot have strong employment market without price stability, so we got to get the price stability in line. Consumer spending is quite strong still. Rebalancing in the labor market is expected to continue. We keep scrolling here. There's a long road ahead for reducing inflation to 2%. And the fact that we decided to keep the policy rate constant does not mean that we reach the policy stance we wanted or not, so they're still leaving themselves open for an interest rate hike. A lot of people think there is going to be an interest rate hike, not the next one, maybe the one after that, maybe in the beginning of the year. And last but not least, we're pretty close to where we need to be. I wouldn't attach greater importance to an interest rate increase. So they're trying to minimize any market impact. I wouldn't attach greater importance to an interest rate increase. I wouldn't care that much if we increase rates. Does that signal that they are going to increase maybe one or two pauses from now? I think that's signaling a strong maybe with a capital M. Yeah, I think a big takeaway from this is where it says the full effects of the Fed's tightening have yet to be felt. And that is definitely the sentiment here. Like this isn't the first time we paused on the interest hikes and the markets have fallen. You know, the past two days on the live stream, everything's going up. Everyone's saying, oh, the price is going up. I'm sitting here saying, I think this is a bull trap. I think the price is coming down because I was looking at the stock market charts, looking at the DXY charts, DXY still going up because of the previous interest hikes coming into play, stock market coming down. But crypto is pumping. I'm thinking to myself, oh, this isn't this isn't going to hold up at all. We're going to come back down the reality. And that has started to happen today. So there you go. Right. All right. Well, let's talk about Japan's economy as well. Japan's economy on the brink as the end stumbles to 148 year low bond yields. So that's a decade or almost 15 decades right there. As Japan contends with depreciating in and rising 10 year bonds, its economy stands at a unique crossroads. The yen's fall to a nearly 150 year to date low against the U .S. dollar brings with it a mixed bag of economic implications. I'm surprised they had the yen that long, you know, throughout all the world wars and everything. Yeah, true. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's I mean, but still 150 year low, 150. The Bank of Japan now faces the intricate task of maintaining currency stability and keeping yields low amidst a high public debt environment. Complicating the test further is the yen dollar carry trade, which could intensify the pressure on the yen as the interest rate difference between Japan and the U .S. widens. So we're going to be keeping an eye out on that. We did lose the Internet, but it looks like we got it back. All right, Russia. Let's talk about Russia here. Let's rush into this next area. Russian Central Bank replenishes gold reserves to 2023 highs amid economic sanctions, according to a report by Kitco. That's where I use all my silver pricing data. Data from the IMF's international financial statistics reveals that Russia's central bank increased its gold reserves in August, apparently returned to the initial levels at the start of the year. Twenty three hundred tons. It was later confirmed by the World Gold Council. That just sounds like a shadowy group right there. The World Gold Council sounds like a bunch of bond villains. Kitco also reports that Russia is bolstering its reserves to mitigate the impact of Western economic sanctions, particularly those related to its invasion of Ukraine in February. Often we see Ray Dalio made this big, bold prediction as we see an empire on the decline. Debt is relative. And so, yeah, America's debt's terrible, but Japan's is worse. China's is worse. You know, everyone else is worse. So a lot of people use that data point, say America's debt can just get as bad as it wants to be, as long as it's not that bad relative to the rest of the globe. We're in no worry whatsoever. The other side of that coin would be, well, people will eventually stop buying debt and what are they going to start buying? They're going to buy gold, maybe some digital gold as well. So I'm expecting gold to go up. But silver silver price still lags gold. Have you ever done a deep dive on gold versus silver? I wonder if people even want that. Just would you want gold, silver data or you just want only crypto? I remember like a year ago, we were talking about doing a video that was I think we did a video that was like Bitcoin compared to gold and then Bitcoin compared to silver and then silver compared to gold. And it was it wasn't the most interesting video, in my opinion.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Week in Review - Episode 24
"Cycling isn't just cycling. It can be cycling or cycling or even cycling. Peloton isn't just one thing. We have classes that will ease you in and classes that will make you sweat and a range of instructors so you can find your match. Whatever you're in the mood for, we can get you in the zone. See for yourself with a worry free 30 day home trial. Visit one Peloton dot com slash home dash trial terms apply. Welcome to the Mike Gallagher Show Week in Review podcast. It's just about everything that's happened this week. I'm Eric Hanson, and we begin with President Trump, who made some controversial statements about abortion this week and called Ron DeSantis's six week abortion ban a terrible mistake. We might as well get this out of the way. We got President Trump with an answer to Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press and her debut as the new host, which gave a lot of ammunition to Trump haters who want to hurt him and try to wreck his chances of becoming the nominee in 2024. This is an interesting dilemma that Republicans have. Here's the dilemma. Pro -life fighting for the sanctity of those unborn babies, the sanctity of their lives, the sacredness of the innocent. That's a centerpiece that's foundational for the Republican Party. And whether we like it or not, this particular debate that we're having in America over abortion is crushing us at the ballot box. And Donald Trump, I believe, was trying to address that with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. Let's get it out of the way. I've been dreading this all weekend. Well, it wasn't all weekend. I mean, this first broke, I think, Saturday. They gave a little preview of his answer. I don't love his answer, but I also don't love the way Trump critics are pouncing on him, claiming he's not pro -life. I got into a big knockdown drag out, as I expected I would with my friend Mark Davis in Dallas, because Mark is now hell bent on proclaiming that Donald Trump is not pro -life. And he's saying that because of this exchange with Kristen Welker yesterday on Meet the Press. If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were re -elected, would you sign it at 15 weeks? Are you talking about a complete ban? A ban at 15 weeks? Well, people are starting to think of 15 weeks. That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now. Would you sign that? I would I would sit down with both sides and I negotiate something and we'll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years. I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean, the sanctus would really design a five week and six week ban. Would you support that? I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. But we'll come up with a number. But at the same time, Democrats won't be able to go out in six months, seven months, eight months and allow an abortion. Now, there are people who took that answer and proclaimed that Donald Trump is not pro -life, like it's important to proclaim or make some kind of declaration that he is not pro -life. I believe it's ridiculous to claim that a guy who's the only president to ever attend the March for Life, the guy who promised to get Roe v. Wade overturned because that was terrible federal. That was a terrible federal ruling and appointed Supreme Court justices who did just that to claim that Donald Trump is not pro -life is preposterous. It's absurd. It's virtue signaling. And perhaps it's just. The opportunistic way you chalk up some points for Ron DeSantis, because clearly Team DeSantis is pouncing on Donald Trump over this remark. I believe two things can be true at the same time. You can be pro -life and you can acknowledge that this issue is killing us at the ballot box. And we're losing elections. So President Trump has some campaign trouble to manage. Meanwhile, our current president can barely navigate a simple speech. If you miss Joe Biden at the U .N. this week, well, buckle up. Remember when Trump went to the United Nations and gave a really good speech and the media freaked out and said how goofy and wild and unpresidential and unprecedented it was, they had a complete meltdown and he gave a really decent speech. Compare that to the appearance of Joe Biden yesterday at the U .N. Now, even as we have all our institutions and drive creative new partnerships. Let me be clear. Certain principles of our international system are sacrosanct. Both Biden and Kamala Harris do the same thing when they say, let me be clear, run for the hills, because when they say, let me be clear, you're going to see nothing but mud and gibberish. I mean, babbling incoherently in front of the United Nations. And if that wasn't wild enough, you've got the Ukrainian President Zelensky. He marches in with his entourage. You know, I used to say I was torn about Ukraine. People that I respect insist that we have got to continue to fund the Ukrainian battle with Russia, that the American people have to help Ukraine with its border. We dare not have a wall for our own border, but we better, by God, help Ukraine with theirs. We better fund them. We better give them the missiles they want. We got to give them the ammunition they need. We need to. We got to stop Vladimir Putin. And if you push back against that, you're a stooge for Vladimir Putin. You're a Putin puppet. Just ask Tucker Carlson. When Tucker dared to express the belief that the American people have bigger fish to fry than funding Ukraine, he was thoroughly denounced and renounced as a stooge of Vladimir Putin. So there goes Zelensky marching into the UN yesterday with his bodyguards and his entourage, and he gets up to that podium. And what he said was pretty stunning. I expected he would stand at that giant podium in front of that ugly green background at the UN and talk about the need to fund his military. Talk about Russia's aggression against the Ukrainian people. Talk about Ukraine's place in the whole worldview of things instead. We got this. Even though humanity is failing on its climate policy objectives, this means that extreme weather will still impact the normal global life and some evil state will also weaponize its outcomes. And then people in the streets of New York and other cities of the world went out on climate protest. We all have seen them and when people in Morocco and Libya and other countries die as a result of natural disasters and when islands and countries disappear underwater and when tornadoes and deserts are spreading into into new territories and when all of this is happening, one unnatural disaster in Moscow decided to launch a big war and killed the tens of thousands of people. No wonder loony leftists have the Ukrainian flag in their front yard. You would think the Ukrainian president had bigger problems than climate change. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers hit the picket lines this week. They made a few modest demands like a 40 % pay raise in a four day work week. Speaking of the UAW strike, I watched Sean Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers Union on the Sunday morning news shows. And you know, I admit I'm not a real big fan of unions. In fact, quite the opposite. I kind of think that unions have helped destroy many aspects of our economic system. In fact, it's a commonly held view that pension plans that used to be in place contributed to the decline of the U S automakers. Well, now the UAW is demanding pensions come back. They want the old fashioned defined benefit plan. And as Bloomberg points out, pensions are not worth striking over. You know what I find interesting about the UAW dispute? I heard all the talking points about how the corporate executives at the big three automakers make too much money. That's a Bernie Sanders mantra. That's an Elizabeth Warren trope. The executives make too much. You know, a company can be producing billions of dollars of revenue, but the Bernie Sanders of the world want to cap what an executive at one of those companies earns, which I always find so fascinating. It's as if they want to equate the guy or gal on the assembly line with the big automakers. Well, they're not the same. I mean it'd be nice if everybody made the same amount of money in life hate to break it to your life doesn't work that way. Some people make more than others and admittedly a lot of it is luck. I don't deserve the living that I make, but I'm very blessed to make a good living. There are people make a lot more than I do and I don't begrudge them anything, but simply because somebody that might have a show on television might make 10 times what I make. I don't think I should make what they make simply because we do the same essentially same thing. I mean, and Democrats always have such hypocrisy on this issue. Like somebody just texted me, how many homes does Bernie Sanders have again? It's more than one. But here's something that I noticed when I heard Sean Fain, the president of the UAW talk about executives compensation and how we're not making enough and we're taking steps backwards. I mean, the fact of the matter is the union gave up the defined benefit pension plan in a previous negotiation. Now they want it back. When you give up a benefit like that, you're not going to get it back. That's not realistic. And here's what I'm interested in. You know what was missing from all the coverage of the UAW strike? They never talk about what auto make auto workers make. Now I kept hearing how somebody on the assembly line can't feed their family. Really? What do they make? I kept hearing that Sean Fain kept saying the auto workers have taken three steps backwards. Really? How much do they earn? I know what they want to make. They want a 40 % pay increase and they want to only work four days a week. Now that's a pretty good deal.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from The Mike and Mark Davis Daily Chat - 09/19/23
"Cycling isn't just cycling. It can be cycling or cycling or even cycling. Peloton isn't just one thing. We have classes that will ease you in and classes that will make you sweat and a range of instructors so you can find your match. Whatever you're in the mood for, we can get you in the zone. See for yourself with a worry free 30 day home trial. Visit one Peloton dot com slash home dash trial terms apply. It is mama Cassie's birthday. And wow, I love her. Oh, so good. So she would not choke on a ham. She did not choke on a ham sandwich. That's an urban legend. She she was a big girl. Also, that will attract that kind of thing in 1974. You ready? Here's some weirdness. You ready? She died in a flat in London, where four years later in the same bedroom, also passing away at that location, drummer Keef Moon of The Who. What? Are you serious? I am quite serious. That's dead serious. Hey, let me rip the curtain back. I want to rip the curtain back because I alluded to something that happened yesterday. We had a great, passionate debate about Trump's comments on abortion, which continue to be riveting. It's a fascinating issue on so many levels. It's the best. I want to talk about what Politico says about it today, how Biden world is fearing that Trump is muddying the waters on abortion with his answer to Kristen Welker. I want to get into all that with you and pick your intelligent brain on this. But I want to share with you. Listen, you and I are all about transparency. And let's just lay it all out here. I'm going to get real real with you for a minute. Real, not just real, real real. I'm going to get real, real, real, real, real. I love this segment. I love this segment. This segment sets the day for me. We do this segment on your show and then I replay it on my show. And so to much of the national audience, even though you're obviously a very familiar face nationally. They don't know who I am. No, sure they do. All the years you go in for a rush. Mike burdens us with every day. Well, but yesterday was a notable day in the amount of complaints we got over something you and I have discussed before. Us talking over each other. And I get this complaint a lot. And I got a lot, a lot of it yesterday. I think it's because we were both passionate. And when we're passionate, we both talk. We tend to, and I really want us to both work on it because people love what you have to say. I think people appreciate what I have to say. But sometimes, I mean, I think I got to remind myself to do it like a TV hit. Like on TV hits, we don't talk over each other. When you're a guest on channel five or you're on channel four there in Dallas and I see you all the time on TV, you're not jumping over the host and I'm not jumping. It's a different dynamic because this is your show. And then when I play it back, it's on my show. We're just so comfortable. It's our domain. I'm gonna give special dispensation for yesterday. Because first of all, you're right. We are a couple of big blabber mounts and we're used to going off on long diatribes. Yesterday, because I heard yesterday back and it was glorious, for those that don't know, I suggested that Donald Trump's seeming comfort with 15 weeks means he's not really pro -life anymore. And Mike, while not technically disagreeing, wondered if I might not be doing damage to the cause by pointing that out. So there was the thing. I think it was masterful. I think it was great. Now the problem is when you and I step all over each other, when you're talking about what it's like to fly coach to London or something like that because we're just so into each other and so on. So, but you are right. You are right and I pledge to lay back a little bit. Just a little bit because, and listen, it's all on me too. I mean, we get, this is such a pivotal issue and I wanna revisit it with you here for just a moment and because this could be a turning point for the Trump campaign and I'll tell you why, but let's both work on that a little bit and to the many, many people who sent emails of complaint yesterday. We hear you. We hear you, we hear you, we get it. We're just a couple of passionate guys and we happen to have deep affection for one another and we are very comfortable. We talk as much, I think, sometimes off the air as much as we do on the air and I treasure our friendship. So let's, but I wanna work on it because I think you're right. And by the way, I haven't even gotten to what might be dry socket on my wisdom tooth. So don't anybody panic for me. Oh no. Oh yeah. I don't even know what that is. I've heard the term, but what is that? It's like when you have your wisdom tooth removed and then something doesn't heal right and you have a painful process. All right, it's four days now. Shouldn't the swelling and the pain subside? Let me apologize for this to the audience. I had to ask. I know. Well, hey, you wanna know about my medical problems? I'll tell you. I did, I did. I don't suffer in silence. I do not suffer in silence. So anyway, so I don't know. I'm taking antibiotics. I found some old antibiotics in the medicine cabinet. I know, I know. Did you check the date? I mean, what, do antibiotics turn to poison or does it not? Or I think they just turned to emptiness, don't they? I feel like I got an eyeball growing out of my forehead, but other than that, it's okay. What was an expired medicine for you? What's the medicine? Well, it's not that old. But it's like Dosey Mikelin or something. And I looked it up and it said, you can use it for infected wisdom teeth. So I'm gonna try it, but I don't know. I just think it should be getting better by now. I'm not getting the four days. Anyway, this is a pivotal issue and I'll tell you why. This is such a heartfelt issue. And the reason I was not entirely comfortable even with disagreeing with you yesterday is because I have such respect for everybody who's on the pro -life side of the equation here. Gavin Newsom yesterday went on an abortion tirade. And again, these Democrats will not ever acknowledge any restriction whatsoever on abortion. They can't do it, Mark.
The Hair Radio Show with Kerry Hines
Nicole Marie's Hope of the Day: Look Pressure in the Eye!
"All of our fans what hope of the day is all about please take it away Nicole Marie Thank You Carrie well first of all hope is important to each and every one of us because it gives our lives meaning it's that belief that our future can be better than our past so no matter what we may have been through going through going to go through there's always hope just that positive expectation that change can and will occur in all of our lives so every day I share an inspirational way from a book by Patrick Lindsay and it's called high hope so I want to share the hope of this Tuesday for all of the fans of the hair radio morning show and it is look pressure in the eye try to take out the emotion view the situation dispassionately for what it is look for ways to ease the pressure set paths break them into manageable segments that way your vision will be clear and that is our hope of the day for this Tuesday a clear matching you carry you well can't ask for anything better than that you can actually and so yes because I've got to say for me I start immediately thinking about how to make my own vision clearer that's right yes and with that I think that's just hit it on the head with high hopes I really do but Nicole what about yourself what are your thoughts on all well I totally agree that you look pressure head on look it in the eye whatever task you set for yourself you have to keep going and so you're going to have ups you're going to have down but you don't give up you keep going when you break your path into manageable segments or pieces then that makes it more manageable for you it takes some of the pressure off of you and it just helps you be able to accomplish things and keep it moving that's what it's all about I gotta tell you I know that that's what it does and I know that that's what we should do but I think some folks have a hard time with that Nicole Marie I do and I think people get overwhelmed because they don't do that yeah thank you oh now that's a good
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1255. CBDC's vs Stablecoins U.S. Hearing | FULL BREAKDOWN
"All right, so today we're going to dive into CBDCs, stablecoins, and a hearing. All of this happening around what this might look like, both in the government -issued CBDC or possibly even the private sector. I'm going to break it all down for you. We've got a ton of clips. You guys don't want to miss it. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back in a Tech Path. All right. We're going to get started here. This is a pretty big hearing. It goes through a lot around the development of CBDCs and whether or not central bank digital currency in case you guys are brand new to our channel and don't understand what that is. You're going to learn a lot here about what's happening with electronic money for you and possibly a controlled state money at some point. This is coming over from the Financial Services Committee. This is a hearing entitled Digital Dollar Dilemma, the Implications of a Central Bank Digital Currency and Private Sector Alternatives. And that's really kind of the crux of the matter. We're going to go into it. There are several people that are in this hearing. We'll break down each one of them, give you guys a shortened version because this is multi -hours that we've boiled down into about 12 minutes of clips. You're going to love it. All right, so let's go to our first clip right here, kind of give an intro. Let's check this one out. We're here to better understand what central bank digital currencies are and the concept of digital money to compare CBDCs to privately issued payment stablecoins. So let me be unequivocally clear here for this audience. There is no support for a CBDC in Congress except from those on the fringes who think somehow a CBDC might be an amazing solution to many unstated global problems. Several members, Mr. Emmer, Mr. Mooney, Mr. Auchincloss, and I have introduced bills stating that the Federal Reserve does not have the authority to issue a U .S. CBDC. I particularly want to say thank you to Mr. Auchincloss, Mr. Torres, and Mr. Nickel for their work on our bill and demonstrating that this isn't a controversial or partisan point of view. All right, so you may want to look at some of the bills that they've introduced. I'll just cut back to this page here on McHenry's website here. So they have the House Bill 3402, which is the power of the Mint Act, the Digital Dollar Prevention Act, and also the CBDC Anti -Surveillance State Act. That's what he is mentioning there. So I want to go to this next clip that goes into a little bit deeper around how this hearing is going to play out. Listen in. There are many myths surrounding CBDCs, and I will use my time to discuss what I consider the three most important. First, issuing a CBDC would not help preserve the status of the United States dollar. It would likely damage it. The dollar's renowned status is owed to the strength of the American economy and its legal protections for private citizens relative to many other countries. Anyone who wants to use the dollar would lose a layer of protection from that type of government abuse. The second myth is that a CBDC would expand financial inclusion by providing a new source of financial services for America's unbanked and underbanked populations. That unbanked and underbanked Americans primarily are in that situation because either they don't have enough money to have an account or they don't want to give their personal information to a bank or the government. While some proponents argue that a CBDC lowers the cost of providing financial services, that's true only if the government subsidizes those costs or chooses to waive the same level of regulatory scrutiny it requires of private firms. It's also the one that causes those unbanked Americans to say they don't trust banks. All right. So as you can kind of see, he's setting up the committee or the hearing, I should say, to really kind of frame it because there is a good guy and a bad guy in this. I think you'll start to picture it out. But Norbert actually coming in from the Cato Institute does do a good job of kind of setting the stage. Let's go to our next clip. This is going to be our clip three. And in this clip, it's going to get into where the abuse could come from. Listen in. There is no discernible reason for the United States to move toward a CBDC right now. So if the liabilities with CBDC increase, so too must the Fed's assets. The Fed could buy more Treasury securities to match CBDC, but that could possibly invite pressure on the Fed to issue more CBDCs to, in turn, absorb more government debt. And overall, that dynamic could further erode the limited fiscal discipline that we have remaining. All right. So a lot's already on the Fed's plate. They already have to deal with inflation they're dealing with. Now they probably have to go into where they're realizing the management of a central bank digital currency. Again, these are the challenges, I think, that would occur and would create that abuse that we see in government agencies so often. I think as you look at not only the scenario, because in this particular hearing, there's quite a few people against the CBDCs, but there still are people that are vying for CBDCs and how that plays out. Let's get into the banking industry, and I want to go to this next clip, our clip four, that talks about the banking industry and how they'd be affected. Listen in. We believe that at this point, there is little evidence that a CBDC would bring measurable benefits to the U .S. economy or consumers. A so -called flight to quality is something that we fear would be almost inevitable. In times particularly of financial stress or instability, a CBDC would be viewed likely as the ultimate safe asset, and depositors would likely be incentivized to pull the deposits out of the banking system and put them into CBDCs as a safe asset, which would reduce the availability of deposits available to lend out and, moreover, increase the cost of credit. Banks have led numerous efforts to improve the speed and security of payments. Zelle is another example of bank -led innovation. A bank -owned peer -to -peer payment service through which transferred funds are available almost immediately. All right. So a couple of things there, you know, she did hit, remember, she's representing the banking industry. So if CBDCs were to come to light, the banking industry would cause, I think it would be somewhat of a collapse overall. And she is correct, is that the reduction of deposits in any kind of pressured economy would fly to, you know, a capital that feels more secure, feels more secure. And this would essentially crater the economy through the lack of business credit, the lack of liquidity in the markets, and essentially a disruption completely of the banking system. Now, that may be the evil plan. We don't know. But I think the banks are going to fight this pretty, pretty hard. She mentioned Zelle, which is absolutely a no -go. I mean, Zelle is absolutely trash. It is not a platform. I think that's where blockchain starts to play into an opportunity for these digital payment systems to be implemented, providing that we can get some clarity on the legislative landscape. Let's go over to our next clip, which is our clip five. This is talking about eCash, which is their idea of a solution. Listen in. I worry about some of the recent false narratives and fear mongering, much of which has been fueled by the crypto industry itself. That fear mongering around a CBDC being weaponized as a tool for government surveillance or control. This is why I've introduced the eCash Act. This bill directs the Treasury to design and pilot a digital version of cash and would complement the Fed -issued CBDC. It would allow individuals to make instant peer -to -peer payments with no consumer data or transaction tracking and without the use of a bank account. Today, I support the call for a digital dollar system, including CBDC, Fed accounts and eCash. When discussing privacy, the digital dollar system and CBDC should be compared to the existing systems that we are already using. We envision hardware devices, so those can be cards similar in size to an existing debit or credit card, or they can be secured SIM cards or something like it on a phone that would enable hardware -based transactions and for people to make payments as they do today with paper cash for everyday things without fear of government or corporate surveillance, which occurs in tandem when we use digital payments today. All right, so this is the official site of the eCash Act, and it gets into some of the detail that they're talking about, but there's a lot of problems with this. One item, replicate the anonymity and privacy -respecting features of physical cash, okay. To the greatest extent reasonably practically possible. So this is telling me maybe they don't have the full case of anonymity and privacy worked out just yet. Secured hardware issued and or authorized by the government, that's another issue that would be a problem.
Cyber Security Weekly Podcast
A highlight from Episode 377 - Artificial Intelligence and Operational Resiliency
"This is Jane Lo, and I'm at the Global Resiliency Federation office here in Singapore. And with me today, I'm very pleased and very privileged to have Mark Orsi, who is the CEO of GRF or Global Resiliency Federation, all the way from United States of America. So thank you, Mark, for your time today. Thank you for having me. And so Mark will be sharing with us the latest in terms of artificial intelligence, which is causing a lot of excitement nowadays, as well as the operational resiliency framework, which has been developed by GRF over the last year or so. So Mark, you know, give us a brief introduction about yourself and also GRF and what, you know, the organisation does. And I also understand that you're very passionate about AI. So tell us about the history of your career as well. Sure. So I started as an aerospace engineer many, many years ago. And after aerospace, I was in computer science and I was working on computer vision. So it's really been interesting to see the journey until today. But additionally, so the last 15 years or so, I've been in the financial services sector primarily and technology risk and cybersecurity. I worked at Goldman Sachs for about eight years, KPMG for a few years, JP Morgan for a few years. And then in the past four years, I've been at Global Resilience Federation and we're a non -profit. We manage and support 17 different sharing communities. ISACs, which are really information sharing and analysis centres, they're collective defence communities where organisations join together to help protect themselves against the various threats that are out there. And of course, you have your conference later in October, later this year in Texas. Yeah, Austin, Texas, October 11th through 12th. Anybody who's local or who wants to make the journey, please come. We also have an OTI set conference on September 6th coming right up. More local. But yeah, it's an iteration of it, sixth year running. And it's security and third -party risk. So we have practitioners, CISOs, third -party risk practitioners, business resilience practitioners. And we have a whole track on AI security. So we've worked for the last six months with 20 organisations on two papers. One is a CISO guide to AI security and one is a practitioner's guide. So let's start with AI, which is what gets people excited nowadays. So tell us, you've got a great vintage point from America, which is a leader in many ways when it comes to technology and innovations. So what is the conversation like in terms of the business use cases that you see in America? Sure, we're coming from a cybersecurity and resilience perspective. And so I was on a call, it was about a week and a half after ChatGBT was released in November of last year. A hundred different chief information security officers on the call, really all concerned about maybe business forging ahead without really taking any security considerations into play. But also about some of the major strengths that they could, how can we use this for good as well, right? How can we use it to find vulnerabilities? How can we use it to secure our code? So an example is one of the organisations had been using a tool like it to actually rewrite their code base and translate into different language, which added memory management to their code and then translate it back to the original language. And they were also using it then to multiply their developers time by tenfold, because they didn't have to write the test cases and additional code around developers. So there's plenty of benefits to it and there's plenty of risks, right? We need to think about the whole pipeline, whether we have in -house AI models or whether we're using third parties, there's different kinds of risks that we need to consider. There's also been a lot of talk of using AI large language models to do predictive diagnostics in healthcare, right? And GRF, of course, you have more than, what, 20 member organisations? It's 17 different ones, yes, 17. And one of them is Health iSAT, right? So talking to your member communities, do you see a difference in terms of the pace of adoption in terms of using AI? Yeah, absolutely. And so we worked with 20 different organisations, including some healthcare, some manufacturing, some energy and others, to put together a guide on AI security, both the practitioner guide and a CISO guide. And yes, there's different pace of adoption. There's organisations that have been using machine learning and AI for many, many years. And but with the advent of this generative AI, there's just a tremendous amount of concern and the pace of change is much more rapid. It used to be every year you'd have change and now it's every week. There's new things happening. So of course, artificial intelligence is not new in cyber security. How is this latest innovation of using large language models, how is that going to be different in terms of adoption in cyber security? I think you mentioned a few sort of like... I think some of the power of it is that ultimately, if you think about the resource limits that we have, there's always constraints on the number of resources that are available that are cyber focused and cyber educated. And so for us to take the power of some of those large language model generative AI and sort of multiply the efforts of the staff that we have, then we can also meet some of the needs that we have from a resource perspective. Also, I think ultimately we're going to get into very targeted threat intelligence to where it'll be based upon our own assets. So if you're an enterprise and you have specific assets and you have specific threats in your sector, then the intelligence that you're delivered would be very targeted to your organization specifically. So it's going to get much more powerful over time to give you tailored threat intelligence. Do you think that the rate of adoption on the cyber defense side is possibly faster than how the threat actors are adopting... Yeah, I mean, that's a big concern, right? I think probably we'll be behind the curve. All right, okay. I think there was even talk early on about just pausing the pace of developments, making sure that we have the regulatory framework so that we know how to do this ethically and responsibly. So I think from a machine learning perspective, we could be doing very well, but I think from a generative AI perspective, we may be behind the curve a little bit. So I think the complexity of attacks, I think we'll be putting essentially nation -state tools into every threat actor's hands. So I think it's a very sort of concerning few years as we work to try and match the pace of change. You think that is something that is quite realistic that will happen, or is it just kind of like a hype? Because there's some part that human developers or human threat actors are possibly a lot more sophisticated when it comes to developing the malware code. And you can kind of tell the difference between one that's generated by generative AI and one that's written by human developers. I'll give you an example of just a very personal use case. So I was working with my son just a couple of weeks ago, and we found an old Nintendo DS. And so he wanted to run videos on his old Nintendo DS. And so we used ChatGBT to learn how to hack into our Nintendo DS to make it display videos. So he never had any programming experience, but we were able to do this. So this is exactly what I'm like, you know, we can put these tools into everybody's hands. So how do we, you know, we need to be extra vigilant as this change happens. So what do you think is the immediate step that cyber defenders have to take in face of this threat? Well, I think there's a few things. Number one, we need to be moving forward to be using it in the right ways, to be using it from a defender perspective. So if it is helping us to find vulnerabilities quicker, if it's helping us to develop threat intelligence better, that's more tailored towards each individual organization. But also just from security and ethics perspective, there's all sorts of different attacks that can happen to those, whether it's on the input data, whether it's in the model itself, you can embed undetectable backdoors in these models. So if you're using a third party to develop your models, you need to be very concerned and maybe even have multiple models to compare the answers. Now, some people also say, right, let's just get the basics right, right? So for example, we'll get more sophisticated phishing emails, right? So that just means more awareness in terms of how to spot a fake email from a genuine email. So that's kind of like the basics that we need to sort out. Yeah, but it's also addressing all the different aspects of that. You know, I mentioned the models themselves. So protecting the models, protecting the data. You don't want data poisoning. You want to detect and monitor these things because they may evolve over time. And you need to be really concerned about your third parties because every third party is going to be introducing AI. So we talk about an AI bill of materials. So the same as you have a software bill of materials, we want to think about how can we develop an AI bill of materials? So how can you ensure that the training data and the model that's being used, right, how do we know which models we're using and which training data is being used? So if we find an ethical bias or we find some, let's say it was trained on a set of a code that had malware embedded in it or a set of code that had logic bombs in it, you don't want to embed logic bombs in your new code that you're writing by using these tools. So we need to make sure that the training data is clean. For example, let's just take the example of data poisoning, right? So that is perhaps, you know, looking at how you provide access levels to your data set. So it's not any difference from sort of the basic cybersecurity measures, right? Right. It's using some of the same constructs that you have across others. But one of the things that you need to be concerned about too, though, is these are dynamic, some of these are dynamic models. Right now, it's a very static world. We have these models that were trained in, you know, 2021 data, right? But in the near future, these things will be much more dynamic and actually responding to the inputs to change their behavior. So you'll need to be monitoring. Yeah, that's very different. Right, okay. So I think one final question on the copy of AI before we move to operational resilience framework. A lot of people say, right, AI is going to mean, you know, perhaps job losses, right? And how do you see that playing out in the cybersecurity field? So I'm, you know, concerned in general. I studied AI 30 years ago. I was concerned about it then. You know, I thought the first sort of impact would be with self -driving cars and in our transportation industry. I think it turns out that, you know, these models advanced very quickly, maybe quicker than people were expecting. But it's going to take a very long time for us to sort of digest that through all of our business models that we have right now. But I think it's going to multiply our efforts. I think cybersecurity is an industry where we're very resource constrained, where people, there's way more cyber resources are required than we have people. So it'll just multiply our capabilities and maybe meet the needs that we have. So I think that's a very positive thing. Ultimately, I think our economy will be changing in the next decade or two decades in different ways. And I think we can only imagine what those changes will be. Right. Okay. So talking about overcoming some of these challenges, it means like resiliency, right? So that plays into the next topic, operational resilience framework. So tell us what this resiliency means in the context of this framework and perhaps cybersecurity. So back in 2018, there was a paper from the Bank of England. So regulatory guidance on operational resilience and impact tolerance. And so it was really thinking about the potential systemic impacts of bank failures on customers and partners. And so the question was, well, how do we respond to that? What are the things that we need to do to ensure that we can continue to operate our critical services through a crisis, even if it's an impaired state? So we, Trey Moss, who is the CEO of Sheltered Harbor, it was an initiative from FSISAC to help protect consumer data. So if there was a bank failure or a bank disruption, you could still access your bank account information. So it would prevent sort of a run on the bank or this systemic impact from it. So we took that concept and Trey was always thinking, hey, we probably need to do more than just protect this little piece of data. It was in a distributed and immutable way that the different banks and the standard format that different banks could access. We need to also prevent the bank from failing its critical services. So we were working with him, Bill Nelson, who is the CEO of FSISAC for 12 years. And he's our board of directors. Trey and I, we met for about a year to say, well, what should we be doing beyond just protecting this little piece of information? What are those critical services that we need to protect? And we need to make sure that through a crisis they would operate, even if it's an impaired state. So we developed a path to operational resilience. We worked with 100 organizations and financial services regulators to develop a very simple path that was meant really for every industry, not just for financial services. And so it's a path of seven steps, 37 rules. We tried to make it very simple. It's aligned to NIST and ISO standards and extends existing business continuity and disaster recovery type standards and frameworks. It takes a holistic approach and really looking outward instead of inward on saying these are internal business services that we need to keep running. Those we call business critical services. Operations critical are those things that your customers and your partners depend upon. And so making sure that those continue to run through a crisis. If you have a wiperware attack, you have a ransomware attack, you have a data center fire, you want to make sure that your customers' critical services continue to function through that crisis. So take an example of, say, a ransomware attack. So attack ransomware hitting one of these industrial organizations, right? So how would this resiliency framework help, you know, plug some of the gaps? So what's interesting is we've done this very much from an IT focus. We want to extend it to an OT realm as well. So we'll be working with OT ISAC and manufacturing ISAC late this year, early next year, and we'll set up a working group to do that. But actually one of our first scenarios that we put out there, it's, you know, freely downloadable from our website, grf .org, is a scenario that we call it ACME pipeline. And it was essentially a replication of colonial pipeline incident to highlight the benefits of an operational resilient framework approach. And so we looked at, you know, what are those critical services from a pipeline? And it was really just delivering petroleum. So there are a bunch of regulatory responses they have to have. There's payroll, there's all these different systems. When it comes to what do you actually deliver to your customers and your business partners, it was just delivery of petroleum. So making sure that they could deliver petroleum through that crisis, if they had a ransomware attack or a wipe away attack, what are those things they needed to do to ensure, even if it's an impaired state, how do I deliver that to my high priority customers and my low priority customers and designing so that let's say I could only operate at 80 % capacity. Can I still provide service to my low priority customers or do I need to only provide service to my high priority customers? So understanding at what point do you cut off service or do you are you going to disappoint some people because it's no longer a service to them. Designing that into your system and pre -planning that is part of this framework. Right, yes, yeah. So it's kind of like looking at from a sort of a consequence perspective on the mission factors rather perspective than start from the asset inventory kind of that traditional. It was interesting, I was hearing some of the same language that we were developing over the last two years coming from the OT experts on the panels as well about exactly that, about operating through a crisis, about the mission critical functions. Right, okay. So we just talked about one scenario which is ransomware and you are looking to sort of, I guess, expand to different types of scenarios to try to help organizations assess where they are in terms of their maturity when it comes to resiliency, yes? Yeah, so it really doesn't matter what the type of attack is, right? And also I think one of the concerns, we've been very sort of IT focused and very much we talked about the data and making sure that it's distributed and immutable, but also from a service perspective. So you want to make sure that you can deliver those services. That's right. Whether it includes manpower or whether it includes just technology. So that's very important. So what are the next steps then? So you say that the efforts started in 2019, yes? There's two active working groups right now. So one is we're developing a maturity model. We're going to release the next iteration in October of this year at our conference, which is in Austin, Texas. So not local. But so the next iteration will come with a maturity model, some of the comments that we've received from multiple industries, and we're still actively seeking, we want to make sure it's a cross -industry approach. We also have another working group focused on a scenario that's in the financial sector. So in ACH payments network disruption, ACH is, you know, domestic cash payments are made through this ACH network, and it's $76 trillion a year. So it's a very significant system. And so what would a disruption like that, how would it impact banks? And how should we be thinking about operational resilience in that scenario? So working through that, we'll probably do an exercise in November of this year, which would be open to many banks to have that discussion. So we'll be looking at the next steps. Like I mentioned, we'll be looking to extend the framework to OT, ICS concerns. And we'll be looking to, you know, develop the third iteration and additional scenarios. So what is the first thing that organizations have to do if they want to adopt your framework? So they can go to our website now and freely download it. It's available. They can actually review it and give feedback. But also think about how they can use it in their organizations, right? What some in major banks, they're using it just to develop training materials. So organizations, they're different business units across the globe regionally, and different business units can consider operational resilience and how they work. So I think it's a really good learning tool. And ultimately, as they implement it, the first steps are, number one, we build it upon the baseline of NIST and ISO standards. IDLE, change management, making sure they have core standards, core practices in place, core controls, and then naming an operational resilience executive. So really getting somebody who has visibility across business and technology. Yeah, a champion of it, who can sustain it through organizational change, right? Who can really have some power and authority to implement it. That's really important. And then you can start walking through the framework and doing the things that are necessary. It'll take investment, it'll take some work to really become more resilient. And so we're working on the maturity model as well, so people can evaluate sort of where they are and where they think they might have gaps. Can they participate in one of your working groups so that they can assess to see how they can practically use it? Yeah, they can contact me. No, happy to have that. Happy to have people reach out to me and contact us. Again, our website, grf .org .org. And yeah, we're continuing to develop new working groups and new sector focal points. Our goal is to make the whole ecosystem more resilient, to figure out how organizations can do that and to contribute to security and resilience in any way that we can. So this is one way to do that. Possibly there's a way to incorporate AI element, the latest generative AI element. I would love it, right? I love it. I mean, that's a real passion of mine from many years ago. So it's great to kind of see it finally come into play. And we just have to address it in the right way and with the right security concerns. So, well, Mark, thank you so much for your time today to talk to us about generative AI, as well as operational resiliency framework that GRF is developing. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Jane.
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A highlight from Hay Niveles | Glatas 6 con Chepo Guzmn
"How are you, friends? I know what you're doing, I don't know what you're doing. Let's finish this mission, it's very special. It's special because it's the series, it's the series of everything. It's a very interesting book, it's a very Christian book because I remember it in one of my books of life. And then we were incomplete, really. As in the last episode, I've been talking to people. I think that it's still wrapped up here, so it's been initiated with this. I don't know if it's going to be able to progress. Let's go back to the beginning. We want to say goodbye to Andres Marin. We want to say goodbye to him. I want to say goodbye to him one night. It's been a long time since we've been able to discuss it. I don't know if it's possible to have personal circumstances like this. It's been a long time since we've been able to discuss it. Yes, it's been a long time. It's been a long time since we've been able to discuss it. It's been a long time. Well, we have a match. That's why we can have a match. But we have a match to press. Well, the numbers don't go as you'd expect. That's why I don't know. My question is, I don't know if I'm going to press, but also I don't know if I'm going to press. That's why I don't respond to the problem. That's why I don't respond to the problem. Well, today we have a special invite. That you've already known. There are toxic communities in the community that have invented Andres. They've already known the invite. And then, why don't we give you a little bit of an excuse? Chepo. Chepo Guzmán. Good evening. It's been a long time since we've been able to discuss it. What is your initiative? And what do you want to do? Well, yes, I really like it. I'm Chepo Guzmán, and I'm here for an interview with Narcos, but I don't. I'm from Guatemala. I also think that the drug, the narcotraffic, is going to be broken. But no, I don't want to talk about those things. But we have problems. You've already called the police, the night, and some of their documents. Their names, their Facebook. I had an experience in a place like this. And I could see the creativity. And the person that was there, the person who was there, was one of the Mexican soldiers. And I told him that I was going to kill him. And he said that he was going to give me an invite to resolve one of those things. And I told him that I was going to send Narcos. And he said that he was Chepo Guzmán. And the soldier was just about to say something. So he said, oh, Chepo Guzmán, and the soldier was like, I'm Chepo Guzmán, so he said, how do you feel? The losses, and so on. We had to take the money, all the money, and for the trash. That was very easy. But I didn't have the experience. I just want to say that they are very, very cool. I think they are like the ones that we have seen in the past. So, they are pretty cool.
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A highlight from The Professional Rule Breaker Episode 59 - Redefining Sales with a Touch of Positivity with Hicham John Elanmati
"I tell people, forget the numbers. The numbers will come by default if you just do it. It's it's it's again, it's a number game, right? But so it's a low of average. You're going to you need to talk to a lot more people, right? That's one, two. You need to be not looking like, oh, I'm going to get my one for the day or two for the day, right? You just want to you want to look at, you know, for a month, whatever your target is, you're going to look at like how many people among a service and help and give them a solution today. And every day I want to serve and help more people. And so if you go with that mindset and you actually have that real attitude about it, people will just love to actually get that service and product from you. And they're going to continue doing that. And you'll see the numbers coming in like from nowhere. Like, you know, they'll be like, oh, I just you know, I was told about you from so on and so forth. And then you get another call, you get an email, a text and then you build in business. And imagine if you did this every day and every month to get new referrals. I mean, your numbers are going to multiply. It's going to be exponential growth. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love how you said that, because I think even just getting up in the morning, OK, who am I going to help today? Instead of going, oh, I have to do all these things. Completely changes your attitude first thing in the morning, right? Well, welcome back to the Professional Worldbreaker podcast. I'm your host, Kathy Walterhouse, and I'm known as the professional rule breaker. But I have to say, my guest today is also a professional rule breaker. You might remember his name. His name is Hurricane H. That's actually his nickname that he goes by, because this is part two of my interview with my friend Hurricane. I want to ask you this question. For the people out there, since you're a sales guru, too, for the people out there that are struggling in sales. Can you give them some advice on what to do? So it's a big word struggle in sales. I mean, what level of struggle they have, right? I mean, is it finding the customers? Is it is it pitching? Is it closing? I mean, that's the other. I mean, is it because there's a prospect in writing and just finding the opportunity. And sometimes you have the opportunity. You just can't close because you are afraid to ask for, for example, money. A lot of people have that problem, right? Yeah. So so it's it's understanding. First of all, you said the key word you have to be. You have to have the signature. You have to be honest. You have to be. I think we had that discussion in the previous show you and I had. It's about having that that direct personality, that you are not just bullshit in people. If people if you have a solution, that's going to work and you believe in it. That's the other thing. You can't sell something. You don't believe it. I'm sorry. You can sell it, you know, but you will struggle because you will be very difficult and people can read through. You might sell it to a few, but not to to the many that you want to. Is you want to make sure that you are an expert in what you say and what you do and your whatever industry, because that's the other part, because people are going to not only want a solution, but they want to know how it's going to apply to them. And also you need to be able to understand what the needs are from these people, which means you have to do a little bit more digging. So I have you in front of me as a potential prospect. But what does that mean? Nothing. And I know that you might need the service, but I need to know everything about you, whether the service and what part of the service is going to work and what may not work. And if and if I give you all those things, you almost basically sold already. You see, and that's one. So that's that's that's that's in terms of as interacting prospecting is I I hate, for example, something I see all the time. I get solicitations on LinkedIn all the time. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yes. Well, here's the thing. I look at them like, do you look at my profile? Do you see like what what might what I do? I mean, if if if if you see what I do, you probably will not even reach out to me because I'm not your customer. Right. You know, exactly how would you do that? So that's that's the thing. That's your struggle. So you can't be just automated, you know, automated, you know, level here. You have to have an understanding of who is your audience. What do you sound who you sound to what you sound and all this stuff. That's one. So the struggle is not real. The struggle is just a lack of understanding of where you are. Some people are in sales and there's pressure in sales. I think that's the other part, because you're being pushed, you you crumble and you just basically start like, you know, just scrambling things, you know, and you're not really. I mean, if you use I use a smart, you know, formula, right? You have to be specific, measurable, all that stuff. You know, if you use that, you know, and standing every single thing, if I meet with you, we're going to go step by step. The smart piece, the measurable piece, you know, the actionable and so on. So when we're going to go step by step and make it, I need to have an understanding of what it is. And I'm not going to go to everybody now. There is a customer, I always say this. There's a customer for every product or service, and there's a product and service for every customer or person out there. Is mine there? You're not going to sell the world. I mean, you could. Depends on what you have. I mean, if you if you sell the water, you think I think you can sell to everybody. You know, so it depends what you have. But the struggles are difficult if you're not really engaged properly or really if your heart into it. Because, again, if you're lying to sell or using pressure tactics, you're going to struggle a lot because people are going to read through you and, you know, nobody's going to invite you in. And even if you did, you're not going to be able to move past the first few minutes. Thank you very much. I'm not interested. Have a good day. Bye bye. That's it. You know, we'll call you later. You know, that's what's going to happen now. If they you know, we I, I use this in training. You want to have spent some time with your prospect. Get to know them. And when you go and spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes, if you have to, you know, bullshit with them, you know, I'm talking about, like, you know, just socialize, you know, get to know them more. And by the way, if they spend 20, 30 minutes with you, they're not going to spend a lot more time with other people if they are your competitions, because you already they already gave you that time. But if you make it profitable in terms to their benefit, in terms of their time, in terms of like, you know, connect with them, you know, from from really, you know, the the good stuff, you know, they're going to want to hear more from you and they're going to believe that you are correct, you know, that you're honest and stuff, because you are genuine. You know, when you're doing that, if you're just coming in straight to the for the kill and you just want to throw, you know, this life and you just go like robotic, like what you have to expect from any salesperson. You end it right there. And they're just basically going to be very cool. But if you open up to them, they open up to you. You have a better chance to move to the next stage. And not only that, if they like you all day on to Raj is yours. And in sales and true business is your referral, you know, is where your best bet is. You can use all the market in the world. You know, your your open rate and your close ratios are going to be very small. You know, you have to talk to thousands to get a few hundreds to actually close a few times, you know. And if you actually have a good referral system and people are going to say, hey, talk to Kathy, she's great. Oh, I'm talking to Kathy because, you know, I know the best of all. I mean, that's the easiest sale out there, isn't it? The referrals, I mean, and the funny thing is, do you find that a lot of people don't ask for referrals, like a lot of salespeople? I'm like, how do you not ask for a referral if you've done a really good job with a customer and you've really helped them and they love you? Why on earth aren't you asking for a referral or even asking, hey, do you know this person? Like, let's say you have somebody that you have always wanted to get in front of. And for whatever reason, you can't. Why not ask one of your other customers? Hey, do you happen to know them? I do better. Yeah, I do better. When when I meet with people, I will. And when I also train my team, I tell them, when you are trying to get in an appointment, you know, as them. Is there anybody else that you'd like to invite your neighbors, your family that, you know, since I'm going to be there, anyways, let's just talk and see, you know, how I can benefit everybody. You can pre almost get your referrals, not even getting them later now. But you're right. People great point. Great point. Yeah. It doesn't take much. Right. I mean, you know, I'm just I'm presenting to one or 10. It's the same thing. Right. So I can I can it's the same pitch and I'll get more engagement. I'll have more fun with them. And that's it. I mean, think about a seminar. Right. Same concept. You just have more people in my room. Same concept here that you can do that. And it's it's a wholesale opportunity. But I think the main problem why people don't ask is the same problem where they don't close, what they don't ask for the close or because they're just, you know, not smart enough to realize that this is not a it's a number game one, number one, and you're not going to win by onesies. You're going to win in wholesale opportunities and you're going to get more of the referrals. People have to like you and they see the value and you have to deliver also. And then then they can they can realize because I guarantee you right now, anyone watching, you don't just tell your friends to go to anyone that you don't like. You're going to tell them, absolutely use my lawyer, use my construction guy. You use my my my attorney, use my I don't know, my CPA, whatever you always give them the ones that, you know, don't use this one because he is bad or she's bad. That's right. We say exactly that. So if we are using that rule, then as salespeople, we also know that that applies to us as humans. We have to apply the same thing. And you got to be perfect at it. And by the way, ask for it. I mean, it's not going to what's the worst that can happen, right? They're going to say, how do you say that? What's the worst that can happen? That's the thing that I always try to train people on, right? What's the worst that can happen? Yes, for the sale. Well, here's the thing. Well, the sale definitely you want, but the sale or anything or even just trying something. Yeah. We start with zero. Then then you're everything else is ahead of zero. So you're good. You know, I mean, remember, this is the part where I think most people in the world struggle talking about struggle is that you have your stuff from a point where there's nothing. Anything else is better than nothing. So so you're you're still ahead of the game the minute you start doing something. Right. Right. Right. I mean, because that's what it is. We start from from not having whatever we are looking for and then we start building to get whatever we want. And so so the problem is, I think when people get somewhere, it's hard to come back to that point of zero. But if you actually determined in your life that no matter what I go point zero, I'm still OK, then you're OK. Nothing's going to faze you and nothing's going to worry you because you always going to be able to restart. And that's the other thing. If you started once, you can start 10 ,000 times later. So and that's the other thing. It makes you better in sales. That's a rule. That's a rule. You know, it's actually you. You brought something up because if you had that mindset that you're talking about, isn't it a lot easier when you get the nose or, you know, because in sales you're going to get nose, whatever. Isn't it a lot easier than if you have that mindset that you were talking about to let it just roll off your shoulders? Because I had somebody that said to me, you know, how do you how do you just change your mindset? Like, I got a bunch of nose today. And how do you how do you snap out of it? And, you know, and it was an interesting question because for me, for the you know, because I've done this for so long, that stuff just rolls off my shoulders. Right. Because I believe in what it is that I'm doing. And it's not for everybody. I've actually been in situations when when we were talking and then I realized this is not for a person. Like, I'm sorry, but this is not for you. I don't think, you know, I thought this may be helping you. But no one more now. This is not for you. And literally, that's how the discussion went. But if you know someone else that you might think this would work, you know, I'll be more happy to talk to them again. So it happens. But but to that person that has that challenge of like, oh, my God, you know, I can't get over like all my objections today and my lack of closing. Well, here's the thing. It's just another day. There will be better days, another day, tomorrow you start fresh. Every day is a new beginning, a new day. You go for the max, you go for the best, you know, the most opportunities. And here's the best way I always presented to my teams is how many people want to help today? That's it. If you go with that again, idea is that I'm going to help people today. Whatever service or product I have. Of course, you have to believe, right? But if you do believe, first of all, if you don't believe in a product, you shouldn't be selling it. You should move to somewhere else. Absolutely. Yes. But if you believe in what you. Right. I mean, because. But sometimes people stay for years with the company and have just kind of like average results, you know, just because they don't. Yeah. A paycheck just because, you know, they don't want to move to somewhere else. And I'm not about average at all. I don't like average. I don't think you do either. Well, you know, it's a joke. We don't we don't settle for 100 percent. It's it's 120 percent and beyond in sales. But in life, too, you know, I think that's the part. Sales is life. I mean, it's just a different week. We almost lock it in in the concept of sales. But we do this every day. I mean, you can't settle for for average or for nothing. I mean, in life. I mean, that's if you do. That's when you don't see results in life and you're like, what's going on? Why my life is not going, you know, in a good direction. I don't see me doing anything. Well, that's because you're settling. I mean, you you have to keep moving. You got to keep doing stuff and just improving your lifestyle slowly. But truly, it doesn't have to be extravagant stuff. I'm talking about just basic stuff. If it fulfills you, that's it. That's that's important. But to your point, if if you're in sales and there's a target, there's stuff, you know, you don't go look beyond the target. So that's the other thing. You know, I tell people forget the numbers. The numbers will come by default if you just do it. It's it's it's against and I'm a game. Right. But so it's a low of average. You got to you need to talk to a lot more people. Right. That's one, two. You need to be not looking like, oh, I'm going to get my one for the day or two for the day. Right. You just want to you want to look at, you know, for a month, whatever your target is, you're going to look at like how many people among a service and help and give them a solution today. And every day I want to serve and help more people. And so if you go with that mindset and you actually have that real attitude about it, people will just love to actually get that service and product from you. And they're going to continue doing that. And you'll see the numbers coming in like from nowhere, like, you know, they'll be like, oh, I just you know, I was told about you from so on and so forth. And then I get another call, get an email, a text. And then you build in business. And imagine if you did this every day and every month you get new referrals. I mean, your numbers are going to multiply. It's going to be exponential growth. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love how you said that, because I think even just getting up in the morning, OK, who am I going to help today? You know, what am I? You know, instead of going, oh, you know, I have to do all these things. I know. Who am I going to help today? Yeah. Completely changes your attitude first thing in the morning. Right. Because it's not this grocery list of things that you have to do, but you get to do something cool. You get to make a difference in somebody's life. Right. But yeah, I laugh about it because, you know, I always tell people this is not it is not for everyone. Right. But you have to have fun with it. You got to enjoy every moment of it. You know what? I tell my team, you know, we all my teams, you know, over the years, I always say this. We all bullshit every day. I mean, literally, everybody talks, right? I mean, people talk every day. You cannot look at two or three people in anywhere that are quiet unless they're looking on the phone. They're chatting and they're chatting just nonsense sometimes and maybe positive stuff. I don't know whatever they chatted. But the point I tell people is like we use the same skill to help people and help ourselves by helping others. And so that's all there is. So enjoy the moment. Enjoy how it is. Learn your stuff and be good there. Be with the mission to help more. And you're going to find people just really motivated to come to you and refer you to others. And they'll they'll they'll be your best actually promoters. And that's the thing in sales. You want people like, oh, you want to talk to the cat, talk to the cat. And that's how it's going to go. Now, if you're not that at that level, you can evolve to that. But but you have to reconfigure your own approach about it. But you're right. The morning is everything. You wake up in the morning, a new day. I'm going to have the best day today. And every day is your best day. You know, that's it. Yesterday's gone. Now, you might have terrible days every now and then. But I guarantee you, if you did it correctly, you're going to have a lot less terrible days and a lot more positive days and productive days. And just it works. I don't know how it does, because your attitude makes a difference. Your energy makes a difference. If you go into people and you know, and you're just robotic and slow and you're not clear or you're not able to answer the questions that I'm purposely slow in my speech, you know, that's kind of like, you know, the vibe, you know, is I killed the vibe right there. I went from high pitch to low pitch. Right. The same concept in sales. If you're like now there's there's a hesitation. People always say, oh, he's the sales guy. She's a sales guy. And we're not really salespeople. I always refer to ourselves as advisors or consultants. And that's when you actually differentiate. That's it. We're here to we're providing a solution. I don't have to sell you like the piece of the puzzle. We can help them, you know, with that. We yeah, we identify we match, you know, the product to the right, you know, potential prospect for it. That's all service. And that's the thing. You don't have to pay. I mean, sales is a process. It's it's it's an artisan. There's a science behind it. There's methodology and all stuff. That's the technical stuff. But in essence, it is still an exchange of ideas and an exchange of personal feelings and energy. And if I do the right thing with you and I do it correctly, you know, first of all, obviously, you don't want to be pitching the wrong audience because you're going to have a lot of nose. And then that's the other. So talking about your first question about the struggle, if you prospecting in the wrong place and the example of people are just coming to me for the wrong, you know, aspect of things. I'm not going to be your customer. So therefore, you're just wasting time. And then you're going to probably like, I hit 10 ,000 people today and I got none. I did a 10 ,000 people you need to reach out. Oh, you can hit one person. That is correct. And then it's over. Yeah. And if you're spamming, you're going to get a bad name, too, in addition to that. And that's the last thing you want is is to spam someone. Let me ask you this, because I know you are a rule breaker. So what makes you a rule breaker? Have you always been a rule breaker? I bet you have. Oh, I've always been. I've always dressed different, different. I don't do I don't do what others do. I do my I do me. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, so it's a good joke. You know, most of my kids, you know, my, my, my, at least in my my age group in my neighborhood, they played soccer. Right. Football. Right. Well, football in Europe and soccer here. So and so for me, I went to martial arts. So I was different. You know, you know, I did gymnastics, believe it or not, for a year. Most most guys were not gymnastics. I did, you know, at least not in that age group. When breakdance began, you know, became something. I was one of the first breakdancers, you know, and doing my thing there. They used to call me like, you know, breakdance guy, you know. So I've always got something different. I dress differently. I talk differently. I did different things. I do more things than, you know, I should. You know, sometimes I do two, three things at the same time in business. The same thing. If if if literally we look at my industry and most people would not recognize that today, but it is a fact. A lot of the things that are used in the industry, I used them before anybody else did them. I actually started them. And now, unfortunately, we don't copyright these things. We work for companies. You know, you just do them and the companies take them and they become theirs and then other companies copy from them. But a lot of the practices, I actually wrote the book for them, you know, in the 90s, and they were copied. And they're now part of the industry, stuff like that. So I even, you know, use processes that that most of the plants, let's say, in my world. And today they still don't do it. And I'm good example. I'll give you an example. So it's concrete in our business with the Medicare, you know, business. You know, you present to beneficiaries and most of the people we know, telesales is one thing, you know, you record. But but when you do formal sales in person sales, you don't record. I started recording presentations and acknowledgment of of actually signing up and rolling the plan back in 2015.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from Crypto Water Cooler: Visa USDC, FTX Dump, Vitalik Hack, Swing Trading, PayPal Stablecoin Ep 004
"This content is brought to you by Link2, which makes private equity investment easy. Link2 is a great platform that allows you to get equity in companies before they go public, before they do an IPO. Within their portfolio includes crypto companies, AI companies, and fintech companies. Some of the crypto companies you may recognize include Circle, Ripple, Chainalysis, Ledger, Dapper Labs, and many more. If you'd like to learn more about Link2, please visit the link in the description. Diving into crypto, we were just trying to experience, learn more about it. Everybody was excited in the last bull market. I feel like everybody was creating something. We do a weekly podcast where we interview people in the space. We just talk, bounce ideas off each other, crypto stuff that's going on. My background is from finance. I was actually in the mortgage industry for about six years, banking mortgage for about seven, eight total. It was fun. I like the centralized world, but I really do enjoy the DeFi and the decentralized world and the Web3 kind of spend everything. It's been a lot of fun the past three years being in the space. Our channel, The Next Block, it's been live for about two years. Obviously, you've been a guest on there before, and we definitely appreciate that. We love having your insights, but no, it's been a lot of fun. Just love learning about crypto and the future that we're going to see for the financial industry. Yeah, for sure. You guys have a great show. Like you said, I've been on there and you cover a lot of what's going on in the crypto market. You interview folks. Everybody, check out The Next Block YouTube channel. Links will be in the description. Go check out David's show and match more. David, I don't know about you, man. I don't want to look at the prices this morning, but I know Coinbase is going to send you the alert anyway, so you're going to have to see some type of notification about what the price is doing. It's not looking great, that's for sure. It's funny, I created a short, not too long ago for our channel, and just talking about the month of September. It is not a historically great month for price action. Right now, we're obviously down to start the month, but you look at the last six, seven years, it's not been great. And Bitcoin is seeming to be hanging on by a thread right now as far as support. So what are you seeing? What's your thoughts right now? Yeah, to your point, I've been looking at the same data points that September's have historically not been great. And even though I would consider myself seasoned being in the crypto industry, I'm still a human being as the emotions still hit when you see the price down in red. So also I'm trying to remind myself, stay calm, stay calm, put the emotions to the side. You've been through this, how many times already? It's an opportunity to dollar cost average. And that's not financial advice, everybody has to do their own research, do what's right for you financially, but certainly I've been buying the dips here and there, some upwards rally as we head into next year for the Bitcoin halving. Yeah. And it's funny, I even have pulled up the Bitcoin quarterly returns. Q3 is also one of the worst quarters for Bitcoin. Really, a lot of things, you could even look at stocks and certain things, it's not been the great, but obviously Bitcoin and crypto, if Bitcoin's going down, alts are going to get hammered even more. We know that. And so Q4 though is kind of where the money can be printed. And so that's where, even though September is a bad month, historically for Bitcoin and maybe even other altcoins that some of your viewers are certain to dollar cost average into, it could be great opportunities if you're really good at charting or just finding those entry points at finding some solid entry points. And then November, October, as everybody calls it right after, leading into November and December, sell, take some profit and then rinse and repeat. Yeah, for sure. And I've been trying to tell people about swing trading. Like, yes, I have my long -term hold bags, but you can make some really nice profits swing trading. And let's say the market doesn't go in the direction that you're expecting it to. You can just add that to your long -term hold bag. So it's kind of win -win. Obviously you want to be smart. Don't put your life savings, don't put your rent or mortgage payment into it. You got to be smart. This may be like you skipping a couple of times going out to eat and you use that money towards crypto or whatever it is, or stocks. So I've learned how to swing trade and make some money that way, and you can use the volatility to your advantage.
The Breakdown
A highlight from How Impactful Will FTX Estate Selling Be on Crypto Markets?
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, September 15th, and today we are talking about how much pressure FTX selling will put on the crypto markets. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, happy Friday. We have lots to catch up on today, starting with what has emerged as a key narrative. That is, of course, that FTX has been granted approval to begin selling their crypto assets. On Wednesday, the bankruptcy judge ratified the sale plan, which was filed in late August. Galaxy Digital has been appointed as the selling agent. At last count, FTX said it had $3 .4 billion worth of liquid crypto assets to sell. Galaxy has been authorized to sell $50 million worth of crypto this week and next week, then $100 million per week after that. Creditors can agree to increase this amount to $200 million per week on a temporary basis before seeking court approval. Galaxy has also been given permission to hedge their sales using Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives without sizing limits and at their sole discretion. Staking of assets will also be allowed if Galaxy deems it necessary. During the hearing, the judge questioned the need to sell crypto rather than distribute it directly to customers. FTX lawyers explained that there was no meaningful segregation of customer assets and balances held didn't line up with customer accounts. They said, quote, it's all part of one pool. There are assets that are associated with the exchange we call the dot com customer pool and the US pool, but they don't necessarily match customer entitlements. So when we dispose of this, we'll be turning it into cash effectively and the cash will be available for distribution pursuant to the plan. Now, all parties appeared concerned with getting this liquidation moving quickly while also limiting the price impact on the portfolio. A lawyer representing the ad hoc creditors committee said, the sooner we can get this process rolling, the better. Now, the speculation all over Twitter has of course been that this would lead to incredible downward price pressure across the crypto markets with any asset that was being sold. However, Jeff Dorman, CIO of ARCA pushed back on notions that this liquidation will be an uncontrolled dump. Here's a summary of his Twitter thread. He pointed out that Galaxy Asset Management, not their trading desk won the bid. They must act as a fiduciary and sell gradually and opportunistically. He pointed out that Galaxy is receiving massive amounts of reverse inquiry already, some from real funds and some fishing expeditions, but over the counter sales will dominate the buying. In other words, we're less likely to see a lot of selling on exchanges or via TWOPS. As good bids come in, they will engage. Hedging, he points out, will be opportunistic, i .e. long puts to offset a large drop in the portfolio. And he points out that people thinking that Galaxy will rush to sell $3 billion in futures right away is crazy. The goal, he points out, is to outperform a static portfolio, not turn the estate into a long short fund. He reminds that Galaxy cannot front run the sales and profit internally, that that is very illegal and that their asset management business is completely walled off from their prop desk. Finally, he points out that this is not some half -baked plan. It involved months of working with the courts to win this business, and that the point of bankruptcies is to maximize the upside of the estate, not speed of distributions. In other words, this may be capped short -term gains due to opportunistic sales and to strength, but it is not a fire sale into weakness. Now getting even more granular, much of the speculation in recent weeks has specifically surrounded how sales of the hefty FTX Solana portfolio will impact that market. In their most recent accounting, FTX said they hold $1 .1 billion worth of Solana, which is able to be sold. That would be around 14 % of the current market cap. It was previously believed that much of this supply was staked and would be unlocked between 2025 and 2028, although the latest FTX filing threw this into question by lumping all of the Solana holdings in together. FundStrap published a report earlier this week detailing the FTX crypto holdings and claimed that less than $150 million worth of Solana is liquid and able to be sold off. Now, ultimately, no matter what people say, it's going to be very, very hard to get people away from the concern that this amount of selling will impact the market. Liquidity is incredibly thin right now, and probably the best that we can hope is that some of the negative price action over the last few weeks has been in anticipation of this and trying to front run it. But ultimately, the only way out is through, and so we just have to deal with this as the next thing we have to deal with. Now moving over to that other big exchange, two more Binance US executives have joined the exodus from that embattled company. The head of legal, Krishna Juvadi, and the chief risk officer, Sidney Majalia, are leaving the company according to WSJ sources. Juvadi was one of the firm's main contacts for communicating with the SEC, which is currently in active litigation with Binance. This makes three executives reported to be jumping ship from Binance US in less than a week. Remember on Tuesday, sources said that Binance US CEO Brian Schroeder had left his position. Now, Schroeder has not been active on social media since February, leading some to speculate on whether reporting was simply catching up on events that had quietly transpired much earlier. According to a company spokesperson, chief legal officer Norman Reed has stepped in as interim CEO. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Safart said the obvious thing when he tweeted, well, this cannot be a good sign for whatever is going on at Binance. On the flip side, crypto has at this point, I think, written off Binance US as a going concern. The Flow Horse writes, why does anyone care about Binance US employees leaving? They don't have a job to do. The exchange is a placeholder and no one uses it. Proof of Talent founder Rob Hayon writes, Binance US doing $9 million in 24 hour volume right now. At what point do they shutter the doors? Gotta be soon, right? Now, staying on the Binance train for a moment more, the SEC have accused Binance US of refusing to cooperate during the discovery process of their ongoing lawsuit. A court filing made on Thursday noted that only 220 documents had been produced by the exchange. Binance US had signed a consent order regarding the scope of discovery in June, but the SEC are claiming that many of the documents produced in accordance with that order, quote, consist of unintelligible screenshots and documents without dates or signatures. The SEC noted that Binance had refused to produce essential witnesses for depositions, including former CEO Brian Schroeder. Instead, they unilaterally limited the list of witnesses to just four employees. The SEC said that Binance US quote, has responded to requests for relevant communication with blanket objections and has refused to produce documents kept in the ordinary course of its business, claiming those documents do not exist only for the SEC to later receive such documents from other sources. Now the bulk of the SEC's filing related to SEFU, the wallet custody system at Binance US, which is provided by Binance International. The regulator called attention to contradictory statements about Binance's involvement in the management of US customer funds. They argued that the usage of SEFU violates the terms of a prior agreement that Binance US customer funds would not be diverted offshore. The heavily redacted filing also included information obtained by the SEC with the cooperation of a former Binance US auditor who has provided over 6 ,500 documents related to Binance's accounting. The SEC are treating the lack of disclosure of these documents from Binance US directly as evidence of a lack of transparency. Now continuing on the cleanup theme, three Eros Capital co -founders, Kyle Davies and Suzu have been slapped with a nine year ban from the regulated financial services industry in Singapore. The pair have been prohibited from taking part in the management of or being a major investor in any regulated firm involved in capital markets. Now MAS, the Monetary Authority of Singapore handed down the ban after concluding its investigation into the collapse of the once high flying Singapore based crypto fund. They found that 3AC had failed to notify the regulator of the appointment of a new fund manager, falsely claimed that this manager wasn't conducting regulated activities and failed to have in place appropriate risk management. MAS assistant managing director of policy payments and financial crime said in a statement, senior management of fund managers are required to implement robust risk management measures to protect the interests of investors. MAS takes a serious view of Mr. Zou and Mr. Davies flagrant disregard of MAS's regulatory requirements and dereliction of their directors duties. MAS will take action to weed out senior managers who commit such misconduct. Now, alongside spending much of the last year ignoring requests to engage with the 3AC bankruptcy process, Zou and Kyle launched a new offshore exchange based in the Seychelles. However, that crypto and bankruptcy claims marketplace was recently reprimanded by Dubai authorities for advertising within the emirate. They were issued a $2 .8 million fine, which big surprise remains unpaid. Moving on to yet another hanging chat on Wednesday, Digital Currency Group formally proposed their Creditor Agreement as part of the Genesis bankruptcy. The agreement seeks to refinance a $630 million intercompany loan owed by DCG, which fell due in May and remains unpaid. According to DCG, the plan could offer, quote, all unsecured creditors a 70 to 90 % recovery with a meaningful portion of the recovery in digital currencies. DCG claimed the repayment of loans over time using crypto would allow creditors to, quote, capture the appreciation of cryptocurrency up to $85 ,000 for Bitcoin and $8 ,500 for ETH. We'll come back to that in just a moment. DCG called the deal a, quote, remarkable outcome for any liquidating Chapter 11 case, let alone one in the volatile cryptocurrency industry. Now, the deal will, of course, require the agreement of creditors before moving forward. DCG have secured the consent of the unsecured creditors group. However, the major creditor, Gemini, have so far been silent on the deal. Gemini claims to be owed approximately $1 .1 billion in the bankruptcy on behalf of hundreds of thousands of their customers. The Gemini claim is in a much stronger position than unsecured creditors, as Genesis posted about 31 million GBTC shares as collateral when taking loans from Gemini customers. This collateral has appreciated significantly since the bankruptcy and represents about 60 % of the total balance owed to Gemini. DCG indeed claimed that Gemini customers could see an excess recovery of up to 110 % under the new agreement. They wrote in their filing, at current pricing, the Gemini user collateral is worth approximately 607 million. If Gemini agrees to provide 100 million to Gemini earned users under the proposed agreement as it previously did, or to distribute even a small portion of the Gemini user collateral to Gemini earned users, there would be little doubt Gemini earned users would receive a full recovery. DCG then contended that Gemini is failing to, quote, put its money where its mouth is. The filing stated that Gemini, quote, is not contributing a single penny to provide Gemini earned users a better recovery. Now, the crypto community was not as convinced as DCG made it out that this was a great deal. Lumina Wealth CEO Rama Lawalia writes, The deal between DCG and Genesis reeks of self -dealing at worst and incompetence at best. The deal presumes an $85 ,000 for Bitcoin and $8 ,500 for ETH. The defaulted party should make the creditors whole, not speculate yet again on a risky gamble on behalf of creditors. Creditors lent money expecting credit risk, not volatile equity -like risk. If DCG truly believes those numbers, they should ensure that outcome for creditors through an options contract. Genesis creditors should seek the removal of the Genesis CEO, who was conflicted in a party to the alleged fraudulent balance sheet statements, petition the judge to have a new trustee, pressure Genesis to focus on the turnover motion and resume litigation. What a mess. Now, speaking of Genesis, Genesis will also cease all trading services according to a company spokesperson. If you're surprised to hear that Genesis's trading services were continuing, you're not alone. Although the crypto lending arm of the firm declared bankruptcy in January, many other DCG subsidiaries which shared the Genesis branding continued to operate throughout this year. Earlier this month, the Genesis company which handles US -based over -the -counter trading announced it would be shutting down throughout September. At the time, it was believed that Genesis would continue providing offshore OTC trading from their British Virgin Island companies, but with this announcement, Genesis has signaled their exit from OTC and derivatives trading globally. A spokesperson for the firm said, this decision was made voluntarily and for business reasons. With this termination of services, Genesis no longer offers trading services through any of its business entities. Now, while this was highly expected, it still marks something of a big moment. Wayne Vaughn tweeted, the former largest OTC crypto trading desk is officially closed. Genesis announced today that they are no longer offering trading services through any of its business entities. Seems like a juggernaut falls with every cycle. In this cycle though, friends, I think we can agree that numerous juggernauts have fallen, but perhaps it is just to clear out the way for companies who will use that juggernaut status a little more responsibly. Anyways, friends, that is going to do it for today's episode. I appreciate you guys listening as always. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: With Execs Leaving and Market Share Declining, Can Binance Survive?
"This is a lot for one particular exchange, any company really, but an exchange as consequential as Binance to deal with. Binance US, obviously the first thing on their mind is sort of trying to fight the SEC and figure out a way forward. I mean, there is a world where Binance can exist where it's not quite as big as it was before. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, I was the first mainstream media reporter to pick up a cryptocurrency full -time. This is the September 15th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by fails, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Stephen Ehrlich, editor of Forbes Crypto Asset and Blockchain Advisor and director of research at Forbes Crypto. Welcome, Stephen. Thanks, Laura. Thanks for having me. Just a heads up, everyone. I have a sore throat, in case you can't tell. So you might hear a slightly scratchier voice from me today. There have been a number of news events related to Binance over the last several months, to the point where there are now a number of questions swirling around the exchange in its future about potential regulatory and possibly even criminal actions against the exchange and its founders. And then, of course, what all of this could mean for the crypto industry if the exchange that has been the biggest crypto exchange for the last six years either falls or at the very least loses its top spot. So, Stephen, can you start by giving us kind of the main events or highlights of what has been happening with Binance over the last several months, including, you know, another big, you know, event this week that have brought Binance to really what feels like an existential point in its story? Sure. How much time do you have? Because I think this is just a 30 -minute show. But no, I mean, in crypto, we kind of feel like every day is a week, every week is a year, every year is a decade. And for Binance, there's been no shortage of big news. When FTX collapsed in November sort and of left CZ as like the big 800 -pound gorilla that really was kind of lording over all of crypto, there were a lot of thoughts that, hey, maybe this is Binance's moment. It was already the biggest exchange in the world by a large margin, and it just became so much bigger and even more systemically significant. It's been a very difficult year for Binance. I mean, just beginning with the fact that in the 60 days post collapse of FTX, more than $12 billion worth of customer deposits left the exchange. A colleague of mine, our terrific Director of Data and Analytics, Javier Paz, put together a report just talking about these massive investor outflows that Binance has really worked to try to stem ever since. I mean, then the hits kind of kept coming. I believe it was in February that the New York Department of Financial Services forced Paxos, which was the issue of Binance's stablecoin, BUSD, which at one point I believe reached over $20 billion in market cap and was seen as a legitimate competitor to Circle's USDC and the biggest stablecoin of all, Tether, which has a market cap of $83, $84 billion or so. But DFS forced them to with something that came out of the SEC as well. And that was a really big hit for Binance. It might not have been quite as flashy as the suits from the CFTC and SEC that came in later. But if you're just talking about dollar terms and financial impact, it was massive because Binance was really trying to make BUSD the biggest stablecoin in the world. They had incentives to encourage trading with BUSD. And in particular, think about what people do. And obviously, Lara, you know this and many people in your audience do as well. When you have $20 billion or $40 billion or $80 billion in cash, you can invest it in treasuries or money markets that are paying 5 % annual returns. And that's an incredible amount of money that you can make virtually risk -free, especially in a market like today where trading volumes are dwindling, reserves are dwindling. It's a really nice way to sort of supplement assets. So, that's one thing that happened. In March, the CFTC sued Binance for a suite of charges. A lot of it stemmed from the CFTC's allegations that Binance was operating as an FCM, a futures commodity merchant, basically saying that they're offering options and futures contracts at various digital assets without registering with the agency, which is required to do in the United States. And then in particular, and this much like the SEC's suit, which came out in June, they both talked about efforts Binance went to not only let US customers participate on the exchange, but actually help them find ways to get around geo -blocking activities that they put in to make sure that the best customers could still trade on the exchange. So, there's the CFTC lawsuit in March. There is the SEC lawsuit that came in June. There are rumors that the DOJ is investigating Binance and they would bring criminal charges. CFTC and SEC are sort of civil endeavors, which would kind of lead to fines and maybe bars from trading and certain activities. But obviously, DOJ could bring criminal penalties if they bring such charges and are able to get CZ into custody. And then, I mean, there's other aspects too as well. I mean, Binance has been losing payment and the banking partners around the world. Binance US in June had to become a crypto -only exchange because they lost their banking partners in the US, so they couldn't handle US dollars anymore. They lost their auditor in January. And then on top of that too, just a wave of executive departures going from the C -suite to country managers. So, this is a lot for one particular exchange, any company really, but an exchange as consequential as Binance to deal with. It's really been just an onslaught of bad news after bad news. I mean, there's been a few glimmers of new product initiatives and things like that. But a few other steps I want to throw in there are that spot volumes, like in terms of its market share, it had about 60 % of all crypto exchange volume market share at the beginning of the year. Now, for the last few months, it's been at 45%. And they laid off a thousand people. And then actually, let's also now mention the executive departure this week that was at Binance US. Tell us about that. Right. So, Binance, as you rightfully said, has been losing market share. They remained the largest crypto exchange in the world, but they are losing market share in this dwindling market. I actually believe the latest numbers that came out from CC Data put Binance's spot market share at least at around 37%, 38%. And if you're just looking at their spot volumes, I mean, they were comfortably still above $20 billion daily, even at the beginning of the year. Now, it's down to about $5 billion. At the peak 2021, it was over $60 billion. So, I mean, just think about exchanges make money by taking small cuts of every exchange. And if your volume goes down 80 % or whatever, I mean, that's money that you're no longer getting. And obviously, that's very consequential. And then with the executive departures, as you said, that's something that I know CZ has tried to gloss over. I know when we've reached out to some of the departed executives and they've either responded to us or to just public Twitter postings, et cetera. I mean, they kind of said things like, we want to take care of our family, the time is right. There was no acrimony involved, so on and so forth. But at some point, all of this takes a toll. And at least with regards to Binance US, which is the US I think franchise is the term that they like to use for that particular exchange, they're in a very tenuous situation right here. I mean, even before, and I'll talk about Brian Schroeder's departure in a second. I believe right now, I just checked the numbers before we recorded this, they're averaging about 20 million, not billion, not 200 million, but $20 million a day in transaction value. 10 million of which is Bitcoin. I believe that I think they charge something like 10 basis points per trade. So if you think about that, like 20 million times 0 .1, I'm not really good at doing math in my head. I use a calculator for that despite the fact that I'm a financial journalist, but you can just think about how little money that actually is coming in. And then obviously since Binance US was created in 2019, there's always been issues and questions about its independence from the larger exchange and would it actually be able to find that sweet spot of separating itself in the eyes of regulators while maintaining the super sauce that is made by Binance, a love brand by many customers. And they've gone through three CEOs at this point, Brian Schroeder just resigned. I was speaking with some sources familiar with Binance US and I was basically told that this was not a planned departure, that the 100 person layoff was, but the removal of CEO Brian Schroeder, the exit of him was not. I've also been told that it's important to kind of keep an eye off some of his key lieutenants now, because remember when he joined, one of the first things that he did was raise a $200 million actually seed round at a $4 .5 billion valuation. That's something Brian Brooks, his predecessor had wanted to, but he wasn't able to finish it. Brian Schroeder did. And then for part of that, that kind of saw Binance US as a growth company, he brought in some key lieutenants, chief legal officers, chief risk officers. And I think that now that Binance US is kind of moving away from obviously growth, like any exchange to sort of conservation, it's important to look at some people he brought in and they may be looking to leave. And actually one of the sources I was speaking with told me that their chief risk officer is Sydney Majala, and I want to look at my notes to make sure I don't get the names wrong, and head of legal, Krishna Jubelty, have actually emails that have been sent to them by some of the other rank and file, have started to bounce back. So I don't know if that necessarily means that they may have already left, but it certainly, I think it's important to, now that Brian has gone, see if some of people that he brought in after he raised this big round with a lot of high expectations, if they are going to follow suit. In a moment, we're going to talk about some of the potential regulatory or potentially even criminal actions against Binance and its executives. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible.
Unchained
A highlight from With Execs Leaving and Market Share Declining, Can Binance Survive? - Ep. 544
"This is a lot for one particular exchange, any company really, but an exchange as consequential as Binance to deal with. Binance US, obviously the first thing on their mind is trying to fight the SEC and figure out a way forward. There is a world where Binance can exist where it's not quite as big as it was before. Hi everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full -time. This is the September 15th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by fails, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Stephen Erlich, editor of Forbes Crypto Asset & Blockchain Advisor and director of research at Forbes Crypto. Welcome Stephen. Thanks Laura. Thanks for having me. Just a heads up everyone. I have a sore throat in case you can't tell, so you might hear a slightly scratchier voice from me today. There have been a number of news events related to Binance over the last several months, to the point where there are now a number of questions swirling around the exchange in its future about potential regulatory and possibly even criminal actions against the exchange and its founders. And then of course, what all of this could mean for the crypto industry, if the exchange that has been the biggest crypto exchange for the last six years either falls or at the very least loses its top spot. So Stephen, can you start by giving us the main events or highlights of what has been happening with Binance over the last several months, including another big event this week that have brought Binance to really what feels like an existential point in its story? Sure. How much time do you have? Because it could take, I think this is just a 30 minute show. But no, in crypto, we kind of feel like every day is a week, every week is a year, every year is a decade, and for Binance, there's been no shortage of big news. When FTX collapsed in November and sort of left CZ as the big 800 pound gorilla that really was kind of lording over all of crypto, there were a lot of thoughts that, hey, maybe this is Binance's moment. It was already the biggest exchange in the world by a large margin, and it just became so much bigger and even more systemically significant. It's been a very difficult year for Binance. Just beginning with the fact that in the 60 days post collapse of FTX, more than $12 billion worth of customer deposits left the exchange. A colleague of mine, our terrific Director of Data and Analytics, Javier Paz, put together a report just talking about these massive investor outflows that Binance has really worked to try to stem ever since. Then the hits kind of kept coming. I believe it was in February that the New York Department of Financial Services forced Paxos, which was the issue of Binance's stablecoin, BUSD, which at one point I believe reached over $20 billion in market cap and was seen as a legitimate competitor to Circle's USDC and the biggest stablecoin of all, Tether, which has a market cap of I think $83, $84 billion or so. But DFS forced them to shut it down. I believe that order was also issued concurrently with something that came out of the SEC as well, and that was a really big hit for Binance. It might not have been quite as flashy as the suits from the CFTC and SEC that came in later, but if you're just talking about dollar terms and financial impact, it was massive because Binance was really trying to make BUSD the biggest stablecoin in the world. They had incentives to encourage trading with BUSD, and in particular, think about what people do. Obviously, Laura, you know this and many people in your audience do as well. When you have $20 billion or $40 billion or $80 billion in cash, you can invest it in treasuries or money markets that are paying 5 % annual returns, and that's an incredible amount of money that you can make virtually risk -free, especially in a market like today where trading volumes are dwindling, reserves are dwindling, it's a really nice way to supplement assets. That's one thing that happened. In March, the CFTC sued Binance for a suite of charges. A lot of it stemmed from the CFTC's allegations that Binance was operating as an FCM, a futures commodity merchant, basically saying that they're offering options and futures contracts at various digital assets without registering with the agency, which is required to do in the United States. Then, in particular, and this much like the SEC's suit which came out in June, they both talked about efforts Binance went to not only let US customers participate on the exchange, but actually help them find ways to get around geo -blocking activities that they put in to make sure that the best customers could still trade on the exchange. There's the CFTC lawsuit in March. There is the SEC lawsuit that came in June. There are rumors that DOJ is investigating Binance and they would bring criminal charges. CFTC and SEC are civil endeavors which would lead to fines and maybe bars from trading and certain activities, but obviously DOJ could bring criminal penalties if they bring such charges and are able to get CZ into custody. There's other aspects too as well. I mean, Binance has been losing payment and their banking partners around the world. Binance US in June had to become a crypto only exchange because they lost their banking partners in the US so they couldn't handle US dollars anymore. They lost their auditor in January, and then on top of that too, just a wave of executive departures going from the C -suite to country managers. This is a lot for one particular exchange, any company really, but an exchange as consequential as Binance to deal with. It's really been just an onslaught of bad news after bad news. I mean, there's been a few glimmers of new product initiatives and things like that. But a few other stats I want to throw in there are that spot volumes, like in terms of its market share, it had about 60 percent of all crypto exchange volume market share at the beginning of the year. Now, for the last few months, it's been at 45 percent and they laid off a thousand people. And then actually, let's also now mention the executive departure this week that was at Binance US. Tell us about that. Right. So Binance, as you as you rightfully said, has been losing market share. They remain the largest crypto exchange in the world, but they are losing market share in this dwindling market. I actually believe the latest numbers that came out from CC Data put Binance's spot market share at least at around 37, 38 percent. And if you're just looking at the spot volumes, they were comfortably still above 20 billion dollars daily, even at the beginning of the year. Now it's down to about 5 billion. At the peak 2021, it was over 60 billion. So, I mean, just think about exchanges make money by taking small cuts of every exchange. And if your volume goes down 80 percent or whatever. I mean, that's money that you no longer that you're no longer getting. And obviously, that's very consequential. And then with the executive departures, as you said, that's something that I know CZ has tried to gloss over. I know when we've reached out to some of the departed executives and they've either responded to us or to just public Twitter postings, et cetera, I mean, they kind of said things like, we want to take care of the family, the time is right. There was no acrimony involved, so on and so forth. But at some point, all this takes the toll. And at least with regards to Binance US, which is the US I think franchise is the term that they like to use for that particular exchange. They're in a very tenuous situation right here. I mean, even before and I'll talk about Brian Schroeder's departure in a second. I believe right now, I just checked the numbers before we recorded this. They're averaging about $20 million, not $200 million, but $20 million a day in transaction volume, 10 million of which is Bitcoin. I believe that I think they charge something like 10 basis points per trade. So if you think about that, like 20 million times 0 .1, I'm not really good at doing math in my head. I use a calculator for that, despite the fact that I'm a financial journalist. But you can just think about how little money that actually is coming in. And then obviously, since Binance US was created in 2019, there's always been issues and questions about its independence from the larger exchange and would it actually be able to find that sweet spot of separating itself in the eyes of regulators while maintaining the super sauce that is made by Binance, a love brand by many customers. And they've gone through three CEOs at this point. Brian Schroeder just resigned. I was speaking with some sources familiar with Binance US. And I was basically told that this was not a planned departure, that the 100 person layoff was, but the removal of CEO Brian Schroeder, the exit of him was not. I've also been told that it's important to kind of keep an eye off some of his key lieutenants now, because remember, when he joined, one of the first things that he did was raise a $200 million actually seed round at a $4 .5 billion valuation. And there was something Brian Brooks, his predecessor had wanted to, but he wasn't able to finish it, Brian Schroeder did. And then for part of that, that kind of saw Binance US as a growth company, he brought in some key lieutenants, chief legal officers, chief risk officers. And I think that now that Binance US is kind of moving away from obviously growth like any exchange to sort of conservation, it's important to look at some people he brought in and they may be looking to leave. And actually one of the sources I was just speaking with told me that their chief risk officer is Sydney Majala. And I want to look at my notes to make sure I don't get the names wrong. And head of legal, Krishna Jubelty have actually emails that have been sent to them by some of the other rank and file have started to bounce back. So I don't know if that necessarily means that they may have already left, but it's certainly I think it's important to now that Brian is gone, see if some of those people that he brought in after he raised this big round with a lot of high expectations, if they are going to follow suit. In a moment, we're going to talk about some of the potential regulatory or potentially even criminal actions against Binance and its executives. The first quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible.
What Bitcoin Did
A highlight from Orange Pilling Through Sport with Steven Nelkovski & Patrick O'Sullivan
"The beautiful thing about Bitcoin is if it works with baseball, it works with anything. If you think about value for value, the model, it changes everything. Right. Hello. How are you all? Hello from Lebanon. What a cool country this place is. It's really strange. As I travel around the world, sometimes I go to these places where you worry about the economic situation, you end up meeting the most amazing, incredible people, most amazing resilient people, and Lebanon is exactly that. So I cannot wait to get this film out. Anyway, welcome to the What Bitcoin Did podcast, which is brought to you by the legends at Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100 % renewable energy. I'm your host Peter McCormack, and today we have Perth Heat on the show. We've got CEO Stephen and chief Bitcoin officer Patrick, Patrick O 'Sullivan. I was going to try and say Stephen's name. I think it's Nelkowski, Nelkowski, I think Stephen Nelkowski. Danny, what is it? Nelkowski. We've never had Danny on an intro before. Nelkowski. Yes. CEO Stephen Nelkowski. Now I've known Stephen for quite some time. When we announced Rael Bedford, he'd already announced his Perth Heat Bitcoin project, and then I met him out in Miami. He gave me a jersey, and we've kind of been knocking back DMs on Twitter for this whole time sharing ideas, talking about what they're up to, what we're up to. There is so much alignment between the Perth Heat baseball team and what they're doing in Australia and what we're doing with Rael Bedford over in the UK. And so yeah, I've been keeping an eye on their progress, been impressed with everything they're doing. They're definitely a little bit ahead of us, but there's so much alignment between us and them. And I know not everybody loves the football side of things, but this Bitcoin and sports thing, I'm telling you, it's so important. It's important on so many levels, there's so many chances to orange pill people by meeting them where they're at. And I'm telling you, Bitcoin and sports is going to be big. So give me your feedback. Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy the show. Absolutely loved it. Steve is a legend. Patrick is absolutely beavering away like a legend trying to get all the Bitcoin stuff going for them. I'm going to be nicking some of their ideas. Hopefully, we will have some cool ideas. They can nick as well. But yes, let me know your feedback. Let me know what you think. It's hello at whatbitcoindid .com. Welcome, brother. Good to be on. Who's your friend? This is the chief Bitcoin officer of the Perth Heat. You actually the chief Bitcoin officer? That's it. That's the title. Chief Bitcoin officer. That's all I do. That's what I'm trying to get Ben Ark to do for us. You know Ben Ark? Yes. He doesn't even like football. But he comes along. He gets the whole thing. Great role to have. Emerging role. Yeah. You saw that job ad for that Bulgarian team. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. We've got a call with them. Joe Hall's trying to get me to talk to them. But there's two upcoming Bitcoin football teams, young whippersnappers. The league is expanding quickly. We've had a couple of recent inquiries from teams in Europe wanting to speak about what we've done with the baseball team. But as we've said so many times on Twitter and in comments that the Bitcoin sports league is a lot closer than what most people think. There's a lot of interest. Yeah. You beat us to it. I think you beat us to it. We had a couple of weeks between us, I think. Was it that close? It was. There was a nose between, I think, the two announcements. We were early November. I think you were late November, early December, something like that. We're talking 21, aren't we? 21? 20 said? Yeah. It was 21. Because I think I announced - November 21? Yeah. I think I announced December 21. Yeah. And we took over the team in April 22. Yes. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just beat us. Justin. So many things have changed since then as well in so many ways. What we thought we'd be doing in two years has just dramatically changed so quickly. It's awesome. There's loads we can get into and we're going to. But let's just do a bit of background stuff just for people listening so we can build the picture of what we're doing. So, like, introduce yourself, what you do, and yourself. I know we know you're the Bitcoin officer, but like, and then just tell people about Perth Heat, who they are, and then we'll build from there. Yeah, easy. So my name's Steven. I'm the chief executive of the Perth Heat, who are Australia's most successful baseball team. We've won 15 national titles. We've had 34 players who have played Major League Baseball. We've got an exceptional relationship with the Tampa Bay Rays, who send us out six to each eight players Australian summer. And these are top end draft picks. So one of the players they sent us last season, Junior Caminero, is on the verge of playing in the big leagues right now. So they send us the best of the best in terms of their young talent. And we build a squad and we play a season in the Australian summer. We've got a history of winning. We've got a history of producing great players. We're also the Bitcoin baseball team. And it's been, yeah, it's been an incredible ride. How big is baseball in Australia? It's big. It's look, it's obviously we've got the big sports in terms of Aussie rules. You've got rugby. You've got strong national teams with the Australian cricket team. You've got the Socceroos, you've got the Matildas. So it's not a tier one sport. But in terms of the quality of the competition, if you look at the fact that Perth Heat have had 34 players who have played for the Heat and then gone on to play Major League Baseball, there's no other team or competition that could produce that sort of statistics. So if you looked at one of the football teams like the Perth Glory, they haven't had 34 players who have played in the Premier League. So it's the competition is extremely tough and would be one of the best winter leagues in the world, especially with our association with Major League Baseball. So they send players out to you to get game time. And they also scout players that you have got of your own. There's a bit of scouting. There's international scouts in every city. But the idea of sending them out to us is they will see how the players will react in a foreign environment, a different style of baseball, different time of year. How do these players go in an environment over Christmas, New Year? Some of them are coming back from injury. Some of them have had interrupted seasons. That's a good chance for some of them to also build game time. But it's a program now with Tampa. Then in the last five years, we've had five players already play Major League Baseball. Jacob Lopez was the last just a couple of weeks ago. And as I said, Junior Caminero is knocking the house down, his 27 home runs this year. It's just a phenomenal generational athlete. And what kind of crowds do you get? Yeah, they vary across the weekend. We play a series. So we'll play Friday night. We'll play two games on a Saturday. Two? Two games on a Saturday. And then we'll play another one on a Sunday. So there's four games in the space of 72 hours. And the crowd's roughly between 5 ,000 to 7 ,000 over the weekend. OK, wow. So two in a day. What kind of demands are put on the players? Well, it's different. So baseball, if you're a pitcher, the demands are extreme. Every time you throw the ball, it is logged. It is monitored. It is counted. If you're an outfield player or an infielder, one of the batters, then that's what you're built for. You're built to play every game. So all the pressure's on the pitcher? Pitchers, yeah. Good pitching will win you championships. You need a really strong pitching lineup to bring in the different times of the game. And that's the part of your lineup which you really have to monitor so carefully. Because you could start a series with a pitcher. And if he doesn't perform well, when you bring him out of the game, when you introduce someone else. And then if they don't perform well, how quickly do you run through your rotation knowing that you've got four games to get through? So there's a lot of analytics that we look at, we monitor. And as we said, that pitch count is very, very closely watched. I've been to a few baseball games. I've been to see the A's. I've been to see the Dodgers a few times. I've been to see probably your team. Yes. We went to the Yankees. Yeah, we went to the Yankees. It was too hot, wasn't it? Yeah, it was so hot. It was so hot. Our knees were burning. There's not many roofs on the stadiums, yeah? So you're sitting out in the sun, yeah, baking. But there's heat, but it was too hot. Our legs were in shorts, our legs were burning, so we just went and stood at the back and drunk beer. Then the Yankees get absolutely back. I think they were 10 down within two innings. It was like insane. Yeah, but it's a crazy game. It can be 10 down, and you can still win. My wife has now accepted that no matter how far in front we are in a game, she won't relax until that last out. You can be 6 -0 up, 8 -0 up, and you can still lose a game just like that. It's very, very different of football. In football, if you're 3 -0 up, it's effectively game over, yeah? But in baseball, a three -run lead, a four -run lead, it can change with just one pitch if a batter walks, and then suddenly things just change. It's taken a while to understand and to even get comfortable with it. When I first started in the role five years ago, baseball traditionalists would say, well, that's baseball. It's like, no, it's not. It's bad game management. But yeah, it's baseball. It happens in the big leagues. It happens in Australia, and sometimes it happens with Perth Heat. And so your wife, is that because she's got into the baseball, or she's planning for what your move's going to be like? Bit of both. She has to be into it, but I'm not a good loser at all. Yeah, I'm not probably the best person to speak to if we lose a game for a good 24 hours. After we lost the championship series, that 24 hours was probably four months. Mate, honestly, I know exactly how you feel. We lost three games last season in the league. We lost one cup game, and then we got thrown out of a cup because we played an illegible player should have been suspended, administrative error. Every single one of those, I was not good for 24 hours. I spent the next 24 hours saying, what did I do wrong to contribute to that? Even though it's the team and the manager, it's like, what could I have done more? Could we have prepared the team better? Did we not provide the right resources, or did we not get the balance of the roster correct? There's so many things that go through your mind, but yeah, I'm certainly not a good loser. Were you a Perth Heat fan before? No, with a surname like Neil Kobski, you grew up with a round ball in my household. I was a football fan from an early age. This is a true story. Before I took the role with Heat, I had not watched a baseball game from start to finish. I had not watched a full nine innings. I'd watched parts of a game, but I hadn't watched a whole game. That first year in charge was challenging because you'd be with corporate partners, and I didn't know all the rules, and something would happen during a game, and they'd ask, why did that happen? I'd scratch my head and say, I'd have to find out for you. I'm obsessed with it now. My wife loves watching players steal bases, just running from base to base or trying to steal. Then I look at my family, Grey Caritage, and they're all into it and enjoy coming to the ballpark. Most people I introduce do enjoy it because, again, it's a different sport in terms of the pace of the game. You can relax a little bit more and then sit back and enjoy the menu of the hot dogs or the crackerjack and see some home runs in the background. Well, you don't understand the sport. It's a bit like cricket, right? Most Americans, almost every American does not understand cricket. Are you trying to explain test cricket, that it's five days, two innings each, it could rain and end in a draw? Nobody understands it, but when you understand the game, you understand what brilliant test cricket is. Like my son, he watched the Ashes with me, and I had the first two tests, I was explaining how this works, why they might declare, what the follower knows, which never got used. Trying to explain the strategy of it all. And then once he understood, he got into it, and I was mentioning going to watch baseball. I said to you before we started recording, I was dating that girl in LA, so we were going to watch the Dodgers. It was a playoff season, and I must have gone to maybe five games. I went to the game, I don't know if you know the one where Justin Turner hit a walk -off home run in the playoffs. I think it was against, it might have been the Cubs, but by the way, that itself was an unreal moment. The great finish there. Unbelievable. But I had a guy who was sat with me each game explaining it to me. And one of the things I'd never known about is the whole pitcher strategy. My from assumption the little I'd watched here or there, it was just one guy all game. And if somebody came on and it was injury, I didn't realize you're strategically placing different pitchers in the game, especially towards the end of the seventh, eighth, ninth innings. I didn't know any of that. And so once you understood that, you understood the strategy. And then there's huge strategy, whether you're bringing in a left -handed pitcher to pitch to a right -handed batter, left -handed batter, or someone that can face up to a curveball better than a slider, et cetera. Explaining the game to someone in baseball is a lot easier in the ballpark. If you're watching it off the screen, it's a bit harder to pick up. If you sit in the ballpark and you've got someone that can explain the rules, you will understand it a lot quicker than watching it at home. But the strategy behind pitching is nuts. The movie Moneyball and the strategy behind the analytics is spot on. There's so much you can gain out of the numbers. And that's a big part of our relationship, even with Tampa, is the Tampa front office and what they have in terms of identifying talent and how they use it is something that is a great benefit to an organization like the Perth Heat as well. There's a whole Moneyball thing that started coming to football as well. I know specifically teams like Brentford and Brighton have used it. But they're using it in a different way. They're trying to identify talent, which they sell out. I mean, Brighton. Can you look up their sales of players? I mean, Brighton. They have a profit of 130 million pounds, was it, this summer? I mean, historically, they weren't ever a Premier League team. No. It's only in the last, what, five, six years did they become Premier League? They're now established. But the volume of players they sell and the rates they sell their players for, have they got recent sales? Yeah. Let me pull it up. It was the same with Southampton. They kind of had that strategy as well. So there we go. Okay. Caicido, 160 million euros. McAllister, you went to Liverpool, 42 million. Sanchez, 23 million. But there's more in the previous. I mean, is that just this season? Yeah, that's this season. Did you have last season as well? I don't think it was on him. What was up at the top when you scrolled to the top? That was people who had come in. Right. Okay. But this is their whole strategy. I mean, they're now talking, this guy just got a hat -trick. The other Ferguson got the hat -trick against Newcastle the other day. People are starting to talk about him. And they've managed to have this rotation of players. Even though they're selling their best players, they've got these new ones coming through and they've got like an identity, which means it's a profitable business. Luton were the same. So Luton Town managed to get back in the Premier League from going into non -league, which itself is incredible. But they had a whole strategy of bringing players through and it's part of their revenue model. Does that perform part of your actual revenue model to develop players? For Perth Heat, it's a little bit different because if we have players that we continue to develop, they'll get drafted. And the draft system works a little bit differently to football where the club doesn't take the profit. The actual transfer fee goes direct to the player. Oh, wow. It's one of the first questions our board of management asked when they took the license over. How can we develop players and on -sell them? But it doesn't work like that in baseball, unfortunately. So, yeah, we've got a great farm system of producing young Aussie talent to go and pick up minor league contracts. But there's no return there to the club, unfortunately. Were you a baseball fan before you joined? I mean, I played when I was a kid. But not much of a fan. No. No, it was strictly because of the opportunity that came up that I joined. And when did you join? When? Same time. So about a year before, when the talks happened about, well, maybe this is something that we might be able to do. And then what the details look like for making it a possibility for a team to embrace Bitcoin as much as the team has. And then suddenly realizing that it's going to be significantly more work than what it first appeared to be. Because I didn't really have a role there to begin with. I didn't have a job. I wasn't working there at all. But then sort of trying to orange pill the board after Steve got it and to show them what we could do with it. It was very much, this is the idea. This is what we think we can do with it. And their attitude was, OK, go out and prove it and show them exactly what we could do to kick things off. And then from there, it was just small win after small win. And then realizing, well, if we're going to actually do it and announce things in November about just how far down the rabbit hole we were going to go, that we couldn't just, you know, Bitcoin is not at the point now where you can just launch and say, OK, everything worked perfectly. I mean, you know, it's so hit and miss with things that will work and things that won't work. And that's integration with systems that are already in place, especially when you're talking about a business of this size. You know, it's not your micro strategy. We don't have teams and teams of lawyers or people that can look after all of the various elements. And to go all in on Bitcoin means really restructuring how you do everything. And eventually that came back to me as my sort of ability to transition and see what will work, what's going to work now, what will work in 90 days from now and what it's going to look like in 180 days from now. All of that has changed and just somewhat to stay on top of that and to help integrate it into the systems that Steve is already looking after. Yeah. So I'm going to be interested to compare and contrast what you've done to what we've done, because like we're tiny. You know, our crowds are tiny. When we take, if you want to pay with Bitcoin on a match day, we're talking a handful of transactions. You got up to 7000 people there. So that's that's an entirely different beast. What were you, sorry Steve, what were you doing before you joined? My background is media marketing, so I used to be a sports reporter on one of the commercial networks here in Australia with Channel 7. I was there 14 years as a broadcaster, used to commentate to football games. But after being a reporter for the best part of 15 years and seeing how sports organisations run, that's where the real appetite for running a sports organisation came in and wanting to win championships. So I went and worked for a local football team, which is the Perth Glory, who play in the A -League. I was in a media marketing role there for a few years. Is that where Robbie Fowler played? He did the great man. God. Yeah. He used to come over to Mum's house every week for dinner. Shut up. Yeah. Are you serious? A gentleman. One of the most beautiful men. Yeah. We're always on the text to each other. He's a... You're friends with Robbie Fowler? Yeah. There we go. You're in. I want an interview with him. He's one of my childhood heroes. Oh wow. Yeah. And you know what? He's just a lad. He's just brilliant. He came and played for the organisation. And yeah, it was Monday night's dinner at Mum's house. He loved the Greek food, so we kept to a winning formula. That's unbelievable. Do you know the song the Liverpool fans sing about him? About we all live in a Robbie Fowler house. Do you know about this? I don't know. So Robbie Fowler is one of the footballers who was very smart with his money. He just bought just properties all over Liverpool constantly. And see, he's got this huge property portfolio in Liverpool. And so the Liverpool fans sing, we all live in a Robbie Fowler house. Yeah. He's a... He's God. He's God. He's just an awesome guy. Good fun to hang out with. And yeah, made so much time for the people of Perth. We had a great year together. And he's also very cheeky as well. There was a time where we weren't performing too well. We'd lost, I think, five games on the trot. And it was the time that Wayne Rooney was having a whole heap of issues with Manchester United. And we were about to do this live TV cross for Channel 7. And we knew the chairman wasn't too happy at the time. So I said, we've just got to try and deflect here. And Robbie had been in the UK for a week. And the presenter said, so Robbie, what was the trip to the UK all about? And he said, it was to chat to Wayne. And my phone had been, the media marketing guy just blew up, Fleet Street just went mad with this. It was just an off -the -cuff joke that we were trying to sign Wayne Rooney. And it was just everywhere within hours and we had to put out a press release and it was great because it deflected off the five losses that we'd had, but it was just a bit of a piss take. What was his scoring record like at Perth? Look, it wasn't as good as what it was at Liverpool. We would have been nice for him to score a few more goals, but the team struggled a little bit that year. And I think he ended up maybe with a dozen goals from memory somewhere around there. But it was a good year. And then again, I remember him taking out a little urn when England won the Ashes out before a game. And he put it up on his head and there was photos of it. He's just a great prankster in a lot of ways. He's an awesome person to have in your change room. And yeah, I'm really happy to call him a friend. So I went down the Robbie Fowler rabbit hole with my son the other week because, did you watch the Liverpool Newcastle game the other week? No, I missed it. Right. So I said to my son that there were two games when I was a kid when Liverpool played Newcastle. There were four, three consecutive years. The first one was a back and forth. I think Liverpool went 1 -0 up, then Newcastle went 2 -1 up, then Liverpool got it back to 2. Then they went 3 -2 up, then 3 -0. Liverpool went 4 -3. Stan Collimore in the 90th minute. It's an unreal game. And then a year later, Liverpool went 3 -0 up, Newcastle got it back to 3 -0. And then in the last minute, Robbie Fowler scores ahead of this flying header to go 4 -3. And so I then just had to explain Robbie Fowler to my son, why everyone said he was God. And we went down this kind of rabbit hole of Robbie Fowler goals. I was always really sad, though, because when he left Liverpool, I'm trying to remember, was it Leeds and Man City he went to? Did play both, yeah. Yeah, and I just couldn't accept him, not in a Liverpool shirt. Not in a Liverpool shirt, yeah. It didn't make sense to me. No, iconic to that club, and yeah. Absolute legend. Sorry, there's a bit of a tangent. OK, so going from commentator to chief exec, that's quite a jump. Did you have to kind of prove yourself you were capable? Did you have to pitch yourself for it? Look, I did the four years at Perth Glory in a media marketing role. I then stepped outside of sport for the first time in my career and just did some sales, what they called home and land packages here in Australia, selling some land in the house with it, and quickly went into a management role there with one of the companies. And then the opportunity came with the heat, and I was given the chance to run my first club, which was good because at the time I'd just started as president of a football club as well. So the management position was quite similar. I've run both roles now for the last five years, which has been brilliant. What is the mandate for the chief exec? How does it compare to, say, a chairman in a football team? Just look, every club's structure can be a little bit different, so yeah, a chairman for us is one of the shareholders, majority shareholder of our club, so he's who I report to. I've got the day -to -day running of the organisation, and I report to our chairman. What are the main things that you're responsible for the team in ensuring they've got the resources they need? Everything, yeah. Everything, yeah. I run the organisation. So it's basically probably almost identical to my role. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. Bigger numbers. Yeah, there's bigger numbers, but I don't think it really matters, and there's probably a good contrast with a football club. Whether you've got 10 members, 100 members, 1 ,000 members, a million members, the communication is still the same. You still treat your members the same way, regardless of how many zeros are involved. It's the same if you do a social media post, whether your club's only got 50 members or 50 ,000, you're still putting out information. So in some ways, don't get scared by the numbers. It's treat the position with respect and your members and partners, et cetera. Again, corporate partners, regardless of what the partnership value is, they're a corporate partner.
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"I love those guys. You know, I just, I gotta say something here. Is this going to be out of tank? These two, these two, these two, at least Ben was smart enough to send me a picture of my local aircraft that landed at Avalon. The C 5 M was actually from down the road at Dover. Really? So we had a Dover aircraft and then three tankers. So I get the whole tanker thing. But they could have pointed out the fact that my now home state sent an aircraft to their airshow. And if I knew they were going, I probably should have gotten a ride. You know, I can hear those guys cursing right now, just like Michael Corleone, just when we thought we were out, they pulled us back. I'm really looking forward to a reboot of playing crazy down under. That's very exciting. I got to get back to Australia. It's been forever. I just heard their latest episode and it's funny how their final goodbye episode was there hello episode at the same time. Yes. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I was at one 30, I think, episode one 30, I believe. I remember the number. But yeah, it's in the feed now, even in pocket casks. Grant was a little apprehensive about it showing up there, but it did eventually. A podcast is great. Max flight turned me on to it. I love it. It's great. All right, well, as you know, Brian Coleman has been visiting many many regions of the world, oftentimes just to fly there, turn around and get on a plane and come right back, building his miles, but he was recently in Israel and spent some time there. And one of the things that he was able to do was to visit el Al's MRO facility in Tel Aviv. So Brian and I had a little conversation about what he found there in the we'll play that right now. Well, I'm here with Brian Coleman, Brian, it's good to see you. Max, it's great to be seen. Yes. And you've been seen by, I think a lot of people all around the world lately as you work to complete your united lifetime one case status. You're getting pretty close to that Mark, aren't you? Yeah, I have 48,000 miles to go. So I started with just a little under 300,000 miles. So in a year, I've, yeah, flown gosh. An awful lot. An awful lot. And to some interesting places, and you were just in Israel. I was. United put out of what I felt to be an inexpensive airfare to Tel Aviv and I figure I could only go to Singapore and South Africa. So many times. So I mixed it up a little bit. And one of our listeners of the airplane geeks said come on over and have a visit and I'll set up some meetings for you while you're here. And how could I possibly pass that up? Yeah, he's a great guy. He's been a listener for quite a while. That was great that you got to meet up with him and do some interesting things. Anything specific that you might want to describe for us. He set up a meeting with me at LL. And so the national airline of Israel and we went to their dispatch center and they are now a fully certified MRO. And I got to experience some kind of unusual things at the MRO. Yeah, MR roser, I've always found them fascinating places. I've been to many of them over the years, so el Alice is bringing in outside work. Yeah, they are. And I think it makes sense for them because I don't know how to describe this. They have certain security concerns, and they have special procedures that need to be followed and equipment on their aircraft. And I don't think they want other organizations working on their aircraft. So therefore, they went through the paperwork, the headache, the hassle of getting fully certified, and since they have a relatively small fleet. And that's kind of surprised to learn that it's only about 45 aircraft. They have this great capacity, so why not contract it out and work on other organizations aircraft. And that's exactly what they're doing. They're turning into a money making operation. And did you get out into the shop and see some work being done? Oh, I did. I was very, very fortunate in that they had a 7 87 that was in for a C check. The way checks work is there's be check although that's kind of combined with HX sometimes. C check and D check, which are increasing levels of maintenance, depending on flight hours and sometimes pressurization cycles. And it's something a differs from one aircraft to another. They're not all, they're not all the same, but a checks are more kind of visual inspections. Let's say, I probably should also mention there's also a line checks, which is what can happen out on the ramp. Those are extremely generally pretty simple, but the other checks you typically find them in the hangar or in the shop. And I got to experience a line check as well on the flight home firm Israel, the inbound aircraft got struck by lightning. So they had to do a check. Before they allowed us to board. So that was a new experience for me as well. And each airline has a pretty specific plan for these different checks
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"Just check it out, read it there. I put a lot of thought leadership stuff. I have a lot of other contributors there that talk about their area of expertise. So people from every new management and all sorts of stuff in airlines that talk about new concepts, new ideas in there. So that's traveler datacom. Otherwise check out status match dot com where if there's a bunch of brands we do work with, some we don't, obviously, we don't work with everyone. So it's free to join status Spanish dot com. There is a fee to, if you want to do a status much. Otherwise, if there's brands we don't work with, we have a wait list feature where you can say for like, for example, American allies. We don't work with them. But you could weightless for it. And what it means is we effectively go to the airline and say, hey, look, there's demand for your product. We've got people with status with Delta, whoever, you know, that the want to engage with the program. We don't tell them who they are, but we share some numbers with them. And say, hey, let's do something for these people. So that sort of helps us as well. Because not all airlines are brands want to do this all the time. So we're out there trying to encourage them to do it, because that ultimately benefits millions of travelers globally, right? Mark, you know, is it a flat fee? And can you tell us what it is? Or is it not something that you want to discuss here? They vary depending on the brand, the time frame, like on status match dot com but it can be anywhere from 29 to a 190 on depending on the brand so and Emirates currently is one 90 on. Whereas someone like a best western kind of things about hotels is towards the lower end of that. These fees do change over time. Some of these are driven by the brand itself, not by us. But yeah, but status matching generally, if historically has been free, right? I always made a lot of issues that outlines and hotels have run into a fraud around that. And so hence there's been no one that's really thought how do we fix this. So we sort of came along and how do we make money out of it, right? Because we're not going to fix it for free. So we thought, well, if we just put a fee there and if that's part of how we make money, then we can help the airlines do more with it, right? And so that's been pretty successful. So there's probably 8 or so big brands will work with now on big above the line campaigns in addition to up more even more brands below the line. And so, you know, we're out there sort of advocating on behalf of the four of you plus billions of other travels that are trying to get more deals and more status for everyone because I think that people should be trying new brands to airlines, you know? Once you've got that lifetime status locked in, try someone else. Why not? See what else is out there? That's what travels about. It's about seeing exploring the world, seeing new brands, seeing you types of flat beds that are the airlines have have a shower in the sky and Emirates. It's fantastic. Highly recommend it. And you had some success with this concept in Canada recently, didn't you? Yeah, we did a pretty interesting promotion with between destination color, which is the government tourism board of Canada and air Canada. So we sort of linked the tripod type deal there. So this is back about a year ago when the U.S. border just reopened so end of 2021. Because it was closed for so long, right? So when it reopened, Canada as a country wanted more high value, people to travel to people that traveling with purpose, right? So it's business leisure. These kind of folks to come in. So we facilitated a status match from the airlines in the USA for Americans. To get a candidate status there in star alliance. So you could try it out in the only requirement is you just had to do one trip to Canada. And that could have been like a $200 flight, right? Pretty easy. And so that was ultra successful for the country for the airline for us. Did pretty well. And it got a bunch of new people to try a Canada. But everyone's sort of stuck on their own. I mean, even me here in Asia, there's a few other ones that I'm pretty hooked on. And so we've made it try a new brand. It takes more than just giving me 50% off a flight, right? Awesome bonus miles. I want the gold status. I want to check out the lounge. You know, I want, I want the VIP. So I need at least what I'm used to over here with this other brand. That's like the minimum bare minimum requirement to even think about it. So that plus a good price plus maybe decent connection. Maybe if there's actually an example last week kale Singapore and I thought I'll try a Singapore airlines, right? And there was an a three 50 flag on that sector. It's a 45 minute flight, right? So I'm down straight. I'm down for I'm a widebody fan, especially on short haul. So I'll go for that. And that's what kind of got me across the line on that. So very successful offer that was in the market. Well, the fascinating conversation Mark, there's a lot of aspects to the airline loyalty and hotels and travel and so forth. And really glad that you came and explained some of these things to our listeners. Just fascinating stuff. Did I give us the websites again that folks can go to find the things we've been talking about?
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"Australian. I stray was one of the first countries to it's called capping the interchange rates. So this is the amount that they share in the transactions between each other. And how it all started is the reserve bank of Australia went on a worldwide trip trying to convince other countries to do the same thing. Many years ago. I think it started about 2000. Three, four, sometime around there. They convinced a bunch of other countries to do this, saying it was great for consumers. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's actually bad for you and me and millions of people spend at that. So in Australia, what's happened? For anyone that lives there, I was visiting. Pretty much everywhere you go. You go pay for your coffee and it's 5 bucks and you whip out your Mastercard and they say, oh, there's a 3.5% surcharge for this transaction, right? You go to a hot, you got a 5 star hotel. You paid 10,000 bucks for your two nights accommodation and say, so there's a 1.25% surcharge for credit cards. And you're paying that. It's not the business. Putting all back on you, right? So, and that's just this trade. I live in Malaysia, which also has a cap on interchange. The government did make it legal for businesses to charge extra for credit accepting credit cards, which is a good thing, because you see the price on the sticker. That's what you pay. It's easy to understand. Europe went has a cap on interchange as well. Hence you don't see many airline credit cards over there. There's a lot less and there are a lot less attractive for consumers. People move to debit cards to cash back cards to bank issued cards, not airline cards. And that affects a lot of the financials of these airlines as well. So I think if you look at holistically, which model is best for the world, right? Businesses will survive no matter what, generally, even small businesses, they'll figure out a way to do this. You know, the people are most affected are consumers, right? Because it's more of us. And we're all consumers at the end of the day, right? And the ultimate cup should come down to what's best for you and me and everyone else, not necessarily what's best for the big airline. The second question I had had to do with airline points in general is there a time when those points become a liability for the airline because they owe these many points, these many free flights or whatever it is. And they're on the books and they need to make up for that. When or does that become a liability? Because there are so many millions or billions of points out there that at one point or another they're going to have to pay for. Very good question. You're right. Admiral at the same time. It's a liability, but only if people use them, right? If you never use your points, it's kind of like magic beans that just sit there and never get used, right? So airlines can they can only realize the revenue of the actual mile when they redeemed or they expire or something happens. Problem is that allows U.S. to move to no expiry where your miles never expire, no matter what you do, right? Think of it right into a pickle one day with that. It's like the debt ceiling in the U.S.. It's going to be interesting. So is it a liability? Not really. It is if you use them, right? Because you think there's this thing what's on the books and then cash. Cash is really the thing to think about, right? So when you redeem your miles, the paying someone, right? So either internally, the loyalty program is paying the airline for that seat that you're redeeming to Kansas or they're paying a gift card company because you're cashing out for a $50 Walmart or whatever it is, right? So it's really when people use their miles is where it really impacts the cash of the airline or the loyalty program. So in some ways, they could just, you know, just rack up trillions and trillions and trillions of it. All the models that exist just in the USA. So forget the rest of the world just the USA. It's not possible for them all to be redeemed on flights. It would take hundreds of years of airlines just flying nobody except for miles passengers. In which case they have no cash in that time. So go broke pretty darn fast. It's just not possible. So that's why if you really have in mind, I want that business class ticket to Tokyo or whatever. If you see that flat available go book the damn thing because there's the demand for that is off the charts, especially the last few years when capacity hasn't been there, right? But the number of miles being issued to people has exploded. So you've got all these number of miles going and the number of seats being less. So there's more miles that exist in the world today than it ever has before in the history of mankind and that's only ever going up. And the number of new seats, the new capacity, points redemptions available is not growing at the same rate, right? It's kind of like the Titanic movie. The guy that the engineer is like, he says to rose in the movie. You know, if anything happens, make sure your first to get the life jacket because it's not enough on board. Use your miles if the pro tip of the day. If you see a seat, you want go book it. That's what we say on the journey is reward about fares. We kind of paraphrase Stevie winwood and say, when you see when you see a fair take it when you find a good fare, buy it. My final question is about status match. I want to get into this for a minute, okay? So I'm going to talk hotels because that's going to affect me a little bit more right now. I have platinum status and close to a million points with IHG. So with status match, are you saying that if I let you know about those points in my platinum status and that I've been there that you might be able to get me that's similar status with Hilton or Marriott or was something else because I already have that status? Can you talk a little bit more about status match? It sounds fascinating. Short answer is yes and no again. In that the concept of status matching has been around for like 35 years. It's not a new thing, right? So I think 1986 is the first example of status match we have where someone sent a facts into American Airlines. They were flagging out a lot and said, hey, I fly them a lot. Can you give me some vouchers, right? Here you go, he's a badges. So we consider that the first status match. Yes. So status match, we build a product around it. So me and a couple other guys, all exhale on guys as well. We saw this problem in the loyalty space and we built a product around to systemize it for our audience because it and hotels, they're not so good at running a status match. Campaign or offer themselves, right? So we built this beautiful thing to manage it for them. So businesses a couple of years old now. Start in the middle of the pandemic. Frontier was our first customer. We launched with them ultra successful. And it worked because we charged the customer fee, right? So in your case, if we could help you match your IHD platinum into Hilton diamond, for example, in that case, we would charge you a fee to do it, right? Which serves a couple of things. Firstly, if you pay a fee, you're more serious, right? I'm talking normal thing, not crazy money. And so you get your new Hilton status and you're like, well, I'm going to make use of this now. I'm going to go stay at Hilton, right? So you're kind of you don't buy Amazon Prime and not use it, right? You use it, right? In which case you're giving them even more money. Which is great. So that's loosely the concept we move the status or don't move it. We give you the equivalent with the other airline hotel. You keep your points. You keep your status with the old suit, keep your eye shape, platinum, you'd keep it, the million points you've got in there as well. We would just get you the status over here as well. So the idea is, you know, have your new Hilton diamond. Or gold, whatever it works out to be. And it's in your back pocket now, and you're like, next time I stay somewhere, you know, I'm in my consideration set at that point. I might try Hilton next time. You know what I mean? Whereas previously, you're not even thinking about it, right? It never even come up. You're like, well, I'm just, I will stay in to con or a crown Plaza or whatever I can't holiday in. I'm not holding guy, but now suddenly it's like, you know, there's a double tree down the road. You're like, well, I can get a free breakfast and I might get an upgrade. I might get these things.
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"They talked about how they extended status for people that year because it was a bunch of people not so confident in flying the airline. They're like, you know, want to keep that confidence there. Keep it gold status. Keep flying with us. That was the message. And the years that followed, not so great. For the people when they extended status, not extending status was great. But it's kind of like a sugar hit, right? You get the high of it, and then after that, this is big status cliff, right? The sort of coming down off that where you take it away from people. Because your goal status, it's yours. You earned it. You feeling entitled to it. It's your thing. So let me add lenses yours. You worked your battle for that thing, right? And you feel a bit of ownership. So when you take it away from people, they don't feel so good. Eddie, this survey we did. We asked people when the airline downgrades, what are you going to do? Are you going to keep flying with that airline? Are you going to change airlines? Are you going to stop flying all together? You can do more Zoom meetings. Are you going to drive or you get like, what are you going to do? 86% of people said that they would shift some or all of their business away from that airline. So they didn't say specifically what they would do. They would say away from that airline. That is a big number, right? Now, there's a lot of obviously of it. Keep that in mind. About 75, 80% of people with a goal or platinum status selling also have the credit card. The co brand credit card that airlines are forever promoting in flight. Please have your attention for a second. Get the same X card. Airlines make a lot of body out of that. And those credit cards drive the valuations of the loyalty program because it's what we call high margin revenue, right? So, you know, American allies published that they're gross margin on selling miles was 70 to 73%. Net margin 53, I think it was. If you compare that to what a margin might be on selling a coach seat, which is what at best 5% kind of thing. And so the airlines need to sell these credit cards. They need people to own their miles in a credit card. They need people to spend they need people engaged in this because it's just so much high margin revenue. And this and that underpins the value of the business, yeah? When you downgrade people, there's absolutely going to be a shift in behavior. It's just how much. Is it 5% of people drop out? Or is it 95% of people drop out? And so we looked at Google trends recently. This is what people search for on Google, right? And the number of people searching for united airline status match on February the second after delta is just yanked it from a lot of people just skyrocketed. From people just going to our own website interested in United American on that date, same thing, the volume was 70% up in January and February compared to other months. Which is a lot for us. There's definitely people out there looking to shift their business. Even though it's our fault for that firing and upgrading, right? That's not how that's not how humans think. It's our status. We earned it. I'm entitled to it. And you told me I was a great customer. And now, now I'm not. How does that work? But do you think that in this day and age people really believe that one when a big company says, wow, you are, you are so valuable to us, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm a born cynic having lived in Chicago with our politics all my life. But I just can not believe that anybody still thinks that it's credible when they see messages like that. I mean, maybe in your part of the world people have more options, but I think a good survey, at least to me, would be to find those people in another month and said, our and say, did you actually follow through on your, you know, you were really pissed off when they dumped you, did you actually follow through and book your next ticket with another carrier or the same one? Because I find that people get really upset, but sometimes they just go back to what's easiest for them, which is to do what they've been doing for a long time. A couple of quick things, rob, what you just reminded me of is your call is very important to us. Please stay on hold and we'll be with you as soon as possible. You know, which you know it's totally meaningless. But in regards to the value of the credit cards, back in the 1990s, I used to work for L.L.Bean. And L.L.Bean that was when they first put out their branded card. And it was with a bank that no longer exists. And I was one of the people selling those cards, getting customers to fill out applications. And I would do about a hundred of those a day. And for every completed application, the bank and this was back in the 1990s, for every completed application, not accepted application, completed application, the bank would pay L.L.Bean $50. So just me alone was pulling in $5000 a day for L.L.Bean. And I was one of, I don't know how many dozens of people that were doing it in the store. But what I was going to say in regards to the cliff, the status cliff you were talking about, it works in reverse as well. In doing the podcast that I'm doing with Brian, the journey is reward, where what we're doing is documenting his work toward earning a lifetime one case status with united. He's working on 3 million miles. He's in Japan right now, and he's only 22,000 miles short.
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"It's got nice green logo on it, and you earn some extra tea miles when you fly. So there's a few drivers there getting people to abrace it. I think, I mean, I'm in Southeast Asia, which typically it is one of the last parts of the world that will embrace this kind of stuff, because it fuels cheaper. People are very conscious of it. I think there's a bit of a step between where we are now in terms of passengers, fully embracing carbon offsets and all this kind of stuff. And where we are, so I think there's going to have to be some baby steps to get there. I don't think people are willing to pay ten times for their flight for full SAF on every flight kind of thing. I don't think that's going to happen. But in the meantime, my personal thought is, you know, we're going to have to create new engines, new power plants. New ways to fly. New technologies that zoom us through this guy, maybe that's the easier way that people might get excited about because apparently all these companies say it's coming in two years. So whatever we create next is coming in two years, it's okay. Like you say, this represents so many fundamental changes on so many different levels for so many different people and organizations that to change on a very short notice just seems kind of impractical. Too many things have to happen too many people have to be bought in the economics has to work for everybody eventually otherwise the motivations is kind of not really sustainable, I think. So yeah. Interesting times for sure. All right, speaking of interesting times, this is from The Washington Post, Jeff Lewis at the center of two cases that could remake the industry. Rob, what are the two cases that are spoken of in this article? The alliance in the northeast alliance deal with American that's been pending for a long time and of course some of the people that are not in favor of it say that it's really just a merger with American because they're going to share revenue and that's sort of thing. But the other is the possible merger of JetBlue with spirit and that, of course, was spurred on by frontiers being too many S words. I was going to say frontier being spurned by the JetBlue. I'm sorry, by the spirit board. And people saying, no, no, this isn't going to work. It's going to reduce competition and it's going to have bad outcomes for the consumer. So these are some pretty high profile problems because they're not that many airlines left in the U.S. that can possibly merge. Many people think if this goes through that this would be the last merger we're likely to see. Not until American buys united. Yeah, the delta. I think delta buys anyway. Yeah, yeah. That's probably unlikely. United Delta American. It's UAD. United American Delta. I think that's the ultimate. Otherwise known as U.S. air. Well, that name is free now. You know, it's funny these two JetBlue situations that are going on. First, the northeast airlines with American and then the Justice Department issue in the possible merger with spirit. It just doesn't fit for me when I think of JetBlue. I heard an interview with David neeleman the other day. And he was talking about how when he found
Airplane Geeks Podcast
"match" Discussed on Airplane Geeks Podcast
"First item comes from CNN. Two Americans arrested for allegedly sending aviation technology to Russia. This was kind of sort of the sideline story that sort of caught my eye. Two gentlemen from Kansas and their company is called can Russ, real creative there. Were caught by the Justice Department's task force currently. Klepto capture. Another creative federal justice name. And they were discovering that they did 30 different reasons for indictments for sanctioned supporters of the Kremlin and Russian military according to the Justice Department. So they're shipping airplane parts, which you're not supposed to do when you're especially not supposed to do it to Russia. And they were doing it in sort of clandestine ways to make a profit. But like all sanctioned people, they get watched quicker and looks like the Justice Department picked these guys up. Now this is alleged. It's always alleged because they're not convicted yet, but the prosecutors say that these two gentlemen, they concealed who their clients were, they lied about how much the products cost, they were paid through foreign bank accounts and the Justice Department says all this was to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Russia. So clever naming, like you say, David can rust trading company. That's not too creative. But I really love the klepto capture name for the Justice Department task force. Now, they've been working for about a year fighting money laundering and people who are evading sanctions that support the Russian government. So far, they have over 30 indictments against sanctioned supporters of Kremlin and the Russian military. So serious charge probably won't end well for these two individuals. Robertson, who was a commercial pilot who was one of the accused in this. Was caught allegedly telling a Russian client that things are complicated in the USA. And that invoices needed to be less than $50,000 because there were to be more paperwork and visibility, adding that this was not a right time for either. A shipment to Russian client was later sent through Laos the prosecutors say. So they definitely were trying to work the system keeping a low keeping a low profile, which probably made it even a higher profile. So interesting to see what will happen if we're going to see a lot more of this going forward as the war in Ukraine has continued on beyond a year. Well, you know, why would the Russians want a product that was shipped through Laos? I mean, wouldn't that make that a lousy product? Here we go. It started already. All right, so yeah, in this also ought to be a warning, I would think to others who may be out there trying to circumvent the sanction that the U.S. government is watching for that. All right, let's go into our next story. This is from KIM ATV dot com. First hydrogen powered airplane takes flight in Moses Lake. This is something from universal hydrogen. They developed this plane. It's nicknamed lightning McLean. But we have a lot of creative naming going on this episode. I think the canned roast people could have used the help of these guys. Yeah, yeah. So this is a 40 passenger regional airliner. They flew for 15 minutes and they're using hydrogen fuel cell propulsion. The fuel cell or fuel cell electric powertrain replaces the existing turboprop engines. But apparently a successful test, if only for 15 minutes. Yeah, I thought the sizable aircraft. Go ahead. I said, I thought this was great. And as David was saying, yeah, it's an ATR 72, so it's a standard aircraft that they have re-engineered to work on hydrogen, but my question comes up from this based on some of the discussions from last week's show, is I wish they would have said where that hydrogen came from was it created through electrolysis with electricity that was being generated. Carbon free or was it stripped from natural gas? Because if it's stripped from natural gas, so great that they did it, but it's not doing anything for the climate. There are also using these modular hydrogen capsules they're calling them. They are placed in the rear of the fuselage. And they do say in partial answer to your issue like they say they're transported from green hydrogen production sites, but I don't know what green hydrogen production sites means exactly. But they're transported from those sites to the airport in these capsules that are loaded directly into the aircraft. And they say that all of that uses the existing intermodal freight network and cargo handling equipment. So nothing special required there. But if you look on the universal hydrogen website, they have some artwork that shows different concepts and these modules he's containers of hydrogen inserted into the aircraft. And the thing that strikes me right off is that the volume required for the hydrogen fuel is a significant portion of the total volume of the fuselage from it looks like from a third to even a little bit more. You still got to fit passengers in cargo. And so I think we still have a problem an issue here in terms of the volume of fuel required if you're going hydrogen. Yeah, it was discussed again last week and I'm glad that he brought it up because hydrogen is a great fuel, but it's not energy dense and that's part of the problem. Well, another point I wanted to make about this is that the company that seems to hold the majority of the orders I'm just looking for the name was that connector connections connect airlines in Australia, I believe. They're saying that this is going to be up and running in less than two years, which I'm a little surprised at considering where we are on the issues we just talked about in terms of hydrogen production, but we'll see. They have a flight test campaign underway now and they expect that to run through 2025. And like you say, rob, they're expecting entry into passenger service. This is for ATR 72 aircraft. That same year, 2025. They'll be aircraft converted to run on hydrogen, don't know who's producing the fuel cells or the electric part of the powertrain. That's pretty aggressive, I think. Yeah, remember back, I don't know, some ten years ago when we had the person who was doing creating terrafugia, the flying car on the air and that was going to be in the air and a few years as well. And anyway. All these things are just on the horizon. It seems. And not to sound overly pessimistic. I think we all hope for a future that's yeah, it's different, but there's just so many issues there. Mark, are you seeing any kind of sentiment in the circles that you travel in for these kinds of technologies, sustainable aviation fuel or hydrogen power or things like that or are people talking about these things out there? Yeah, yeah, no. I'm pretty firmly in the loyalty part of the travel industry and there's a lot of talk about creating a green loyalty program or a green loyalty tier for an airline. You know, we've seen Qantas have launched a green loyalty initiative in that program and Eddie Hart as well. They've launched green program Lufthansa. You might have seen. I think a few weeks ago launched green fares. Where the airfares are somewhere between 20 and a 100% more than the typical fare, but it's branded green.
Parenting Roundabout
"match" Discussed on Parenting Roundabout
"Level of drama return level of the lake. How oh it is amazing. How some people are trauma magnets. Oh yes yes. And it's like. I enjoy reading a book about those people talking about the to them in the playground. Maybe not so much. Let me stop talking to you in read about people exactly like you but with better dialogue. I wanna match for the parent. Who like will enjoy you know a chocolate bar. Everyone's your kid gem food while yeah and not interested in that parents who.
Parenting Roundabout
"match" Discussed on Parenting Roundabout
"Talking about complaining about Obsessing about right now the speaker complaining about recess time obsessing about family heritage we also take a couple of breaks for entertainment discussion and a recommendation roundup. Today we are talking about mitha. Co-parenting half's this was inspired by another article. I saw it was thinking if they were parenting apps like they were dating apps which means her interests or beliefs would do to match with another parents. Like for example. Do you wanna match with parents. Who have a house that is especially as yours. What be your your crate. What would you want to match with somebody on. Yeah who has parenting related etch with parents. Who have the similar a similar degree of tolerance. To your own right. just you know things. Like how many times are they going to push their kid on the swing before they like. Or how many. How many times are they going to. You know sweetly respond when the kid ad for something and then what is the point at which they crack right other things kind of the notice when for example playground right. And you're like Because you know if you like looking at the parent that's way too involved with. Yeah like the one who's actually playing with the kid not just watching them. Because i was that mom that would just sit on the sideline and watch. Yeah yeah with a book. I read a book. Yes it's my. It was my me time right. So you don't wanna match with any other parent issues. Just wanna be left. That was right. Only imagine a parent will go push mike. It on the swings in one over involved in one under involved could make a very peaceful combination. Now feel too guilty. I just want somebody to sit with me. And i don't know people watch or yeah lane or yeah you wanna know the degree to which this person we'll be able to just sit with you and people watch and chitchat about trivial things or are you going to hear the entire story of their personal drama. Every single time you go to the playground. Yeah you know maybe not. I definitely want the the load drama person like how do you. How do you account for that on right..
The Mini-Break
"match" Discussed on The Mini-Break
"Six consecutive seasons of improvement on serve her whole percentage has increased in each year since she became fulltime tour event player in twenty sixteen. You look at it. It's gone from fifty point. Three percent in two thousand sixteen to seventy one point two percent. Now for those of you. Curious that seventy one point two percent is currently good. I believe for nineteenth amongst the top. Twenty top fifty. Wt players in terms of hold percentage. You look at the break percentage from soccer. it's also improved now. It started out a little higher thirty three point nine but she's at a career high forty one point seven percent her first-serve serve win percentage has improved in each season as well. She goes from fifty nine point two six years ago to sixty eight point four. Now you look at her. Total service points one Again untold return points one total points one in general. They all continue to improve now. She hasn't been elite in any category. Until arguably this season you look for maria soccer now. She currently ranks ninth in terms of break percentage. Top ten. I mean that's an elite number Certainly so i would say that when your top penance. Something you're probably elite on it in the women's tour but in the women's game but you know prior to this season she hadn't had elite trait and yet she'd always had such a well rounded skills sudden. When i talk about this match being attract meet. You could argue that. The fittest player in the women's game. There's some other in the discussion. Certainly simona halla would like to talk to you. Serious rebus tormo would love a cup of coffee honestly. English tech pretty damn fit as well for twenty year. Old coco gov ditto. But you could argue combination of strength speed and longevity. Maria soccer checks off all three boxes..
Texas Titans Podcast
"match" Discussed on Texas Titans Podcast
"Without having to argue about people. If i was trying to get into a restaurant barefoot which by the way totally legal dozen costco the other day i'm in the line of the pharmacy knows wearing our shoes. And when i'm wearing shoes never the same color on each foot were different colors on each foot just to get attention. And there's a guy standing behind me and he says hey you're stews doug match and the pharmacist said he's wearing shoes often. I'm not Aright.
Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"match" Discussed on Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"But before that we gotta get into get into predictions for this sunday matches that are certainly going to be fucking great at double or nothing. And in the pre show we've got serena versus reijo for the nwa women's championship serena deem. Yeah what did i say. Just arena which i believe. That was eminem's now that was straight. That was her straight edge. Society named was serena Yeah i i wish. This was her thunder rosa. Just because i haven't gotten to see thunder. Rosa live yet in. Harder and serena have already shown they can like put on classics. But we've all got serena for this one yeah spoil. You'll have all of the same thing for this entire card the except for the triple threats or the multi-man. Yeah because we're not allowed to. We've all got bugs beating the team of the things which i don't care of bucks win. I'm just excited for that. Match while apply. I'm excited to just sing. I'm just excited to say thing. Yeah yes. I'm on the fence about that one. Do you think i know about one. I'm definitely i've got a few among the fence on but not bucks dropping the titles just yet. Well i on the fence like prediction wise. I don't know on the fence of whether it'd be a good match. Hell now he's gonna be cool. There's only one match on this card. That i'm just like oh i see it right now. Is it cody versus go ago. Yeah yet one hundred percent is. I already warned alley. That cody's entrance is going to be like ten minutes. Produce to hell. He holds out his arm in fifty bald eagles. Fly out the most self aggrandizing thing you've ever seen. American dream is probably gonna play. Oh yeah because he said. I'll say the original. He said the original version of down states coming back. But there's gonna be a twist. It's definitely going to be hub.
Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"match" Discussed on Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"If punk wins he's just straight up leaving with the title it was arguably one of the most exciting times in pro wrestling. It built to a had right there. I think that that actually brings up a funny thing. I was thinking about where. Wwe can have an edge is because they their production value is always so good that when they have a phenomenal match. The production packages are so like amazing. They can play them before any match and most of them suck but they play it before a great match it is cemented as one of the best matches in his. Well yeah because you also get the details about it like the way when you do show it to other people. You don't have to show them. I mean i would show them the pipe bomb. But you don't have to show them that you don't have to show them punk just screaming at. Vince mcmahon apologize. And then i apologize you sort of a bench. It's all there in that video package. Which i think you're right does give it a bit of an edge to it. But even beyond that people know. John cena and they know him to be the ultimate baby face it. Wwe in it's an interesting thing to show them a match where he gets to hell like and obviously there moments like it in the past. I believe that that is second only to the the second one night. Stand crowd in terms of hostility towards john's i'll now that was the second one night stand was absolutely brutal like it. That was a crucifixion. At least at this point they had a reason to be behind punk and against sina not saying that the ec- w crowd didn't but like it was in storyline. Meant for people to be boohooing. John cena yeah. I don't know. I like i said it's it's this thing of An acknowledged really great match versus literally the highest rated match of all time. Yeah yeah that is the thing. Because i'm i'm really waffling. It between the The wrestle kingdom of eleven match and the pump versus cena match like kingdom eleven blake. Oh sorry i thought that was now. He's going with the dominion one. That's the time limit draw.
Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"match" Discussed on Fight Boyz: A Pro-Wrestling Podcast
"That out of the way ring of honor bryan danielson top to bottom. Wasn't there one where cantu just murdered him with the goat's yes that that was. Actually what mine. Where i'm like. That could even be up there for my just one on one match. Is that where he's who dislocated his ratna. In a match was the was the kanta. Japanese food can't know now. Another one the guy that was actually a the other one that was bringing wagner champion held for like a year of shit Hold on. I'm gonna look it up while we were all it might have been let me see detaches retina. So i'm in this problematic spot where i just realized the best indie matter of ever seen involves somebody who was more shema by the way called it. I okay i just just rip the band aid off dillon. I know we're gonna have to rip another band aid off for what for i think. Imagine that both of you are bringing later. Yeah jordan devlin versus david. Start it over the top. Oh yeah alternate adl david star versus fuck dammit shit as the problem and handy wrestling is. It's just a whole lot of this guy. Not this guy. Actually hunt this guy. I was like so jimmy havoc in this latter. God damn it all my favorite british indie in demand. Who's just like this is so so. Here's the here's the thick david star is arguably a horrible person. Well yeah however four. The one hour that this match goes on he literally has an entire crowd of irish men and women eating out of the palm of his hand. Yeah it is the greatest example of like india crowd control. I've ever seen he even pro. Shirley goes he'll at one point. I assumed just fuck with them. Copy coming face again and then his celebration is like one of those ones. Where the whole crowd cheers. Unlike you need to understand the build up to this was 'cause devlin's whole thing in over the top was he was the quote unquote import killer. Anytime they would bring somebody from the outside like from another country he was like no no no. I'm the irish wrestler this the irish company life q. and then David starr was able to turn it around and be like you work for the wwe. Now your the import. I'm the import killer. I'm the person on the indie. Say as he was he was still doing that thing. Where it was the unionized before that unfortunately died because of him like so he literally got the entire irish crowd. That had been behind jordan devlin the whole time to turn on him as it was. It was masterful. If you watch. It's on over the might not be on over the top youtube channel anymore. Honestly neff a but if it is and you want it it is. It is a master class in like just psychology and just like that was. That was why. I was so upset. Because i watched i was like holy cow like david star and then like literally like like a month later. Yeah no as well. It was a very very it was rough for. That was a reference for their boys. Big big bizarre thing about mine..
Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"match" Discussed on Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"Oh shit gloves. Great sony or give him the benefit jumping. When did today mass wpro mance rainman them. Chazelle full obey western the gulf states focus on what the fuck are going. They will made fucking down focus. They twist limited within. You wanna switch no no no crazy boats..
Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"match" Discussed on Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"The end. He grabbed to do then. Either always something me grow. He's not ready to go london as you do that. He's a grown man. he needs to stay the fuck. Rodney never did any fish out who when he got a fight me cope him. Rob got it definitely gonna fight. We'll do the junk in the monkey. Karate thing drug drunkenly focus of faith. Shen mraz brother fucking franken what. They should've walked away. But it's the dow. Joe you we ask you you. You only fucking seventy five. But in his jumping not everybody. The galaxy son is on by a fight. You ready give me that fake. I do you know you do it right then. Begin fighting don't drink..
Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"match" Discussed on Antonio B Jackson Presents Sweetluck's "Bar Fights"
"And i know ron kitching. One day that employees so hey from his kitchen door speckles hassle. you'll smack. Your house is being acquitted from the removed in. Qingdao rob johnson. The dan mayo this. Did you go with the soap operas. What the folks over. There is a soap from no. He jumped me where his brother and the other been built night. That's fucking soap operas seen when they could hugging each sunday's shit at eight o'clock so it's up hugging. Fuck dude would never fight me one on one on seventy evening hugging. F- i'm talking. About doting pro. Sit down. No about bro made all you want sneaky. Ha you sneaky. Nasty metal wanted to say. I don't know but 'cause i know there's still more we it is is that you know what's fucked up is jumping when i was number one on one so i'll be a we do job renault. Whatever he forgot about only symbol fuck deadman to push push not about that fucking break. Everybody down right away. The biggest fizi table fifteen hundred only table. I will fuck everybody round your chief and up getting haunted onstage. Game here right now. I wanted to take my mouth friendship on the and he said sit where she said. He won't be for fifteen hundred knuckle beard knuckles. No don't bother to. That's what he does what he says. Data set it up is already done. I agree known that was we just asked neglect of. We don't know what we don't know. What location. Oh we can't do ahead can't go away thank. We don't know what we don't know. What location oh. We can't go ahead can't over here. We want to cook listening to fight. Don't don't worry i want to doing. You know what i'm saying. I understand that piggy. Swear right can we take us with. I won't overdo it. But i want to talk done jumped me too. Many times is done planted day. Mother how they blood in my mouth he wants to more. Replace it what it is but i deficiency by i deficiency. That's a good bussing mean so you want blood i-in deficiency mark sure. He's not ready to go upstairs. She wasn't state s. Four route bro. Chill for a second right. You go upstairs gotta you gotta you gotta gotta. I bought upstairs in the freezer. Nothing you don't shit. He got biz biz and. He gave me his beer. And i don't want it then. I can feel the nikola you you go to move back towards.
Mouthpiece Wrestling Podcast
"match" Discussed on Mouthpiece Wrestling Podcast
"It was and then. Suddenly i did just beat the hell carry on your reason. It was bad because like yeah the diversity match one on a road up of the county ejected aback. Choke bum juryman. It was it was. It was really didn't they even start chanting. Tna isn't that the pay per view that they were chanting tna. You know that in that kind of year. That's what they're chanting because that was as he was getting bad. I mean that was during the tag match because it was alleged. Run and the the other guy..