40 Burst results for "Radar"
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Hope for the Cursed (2)
"Well, let me ask you to turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 7, and we're going to read verses 1 -20. 2 Kings 7, beginning in verse 1, this is the infallible, inerrant word of our God. Then Elisha said, hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time, a saith of fine flour should be sold for a shackle, and two saith of barley for a shackle at the gate of Samaria. So an officer, on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God and said, look, if this thing be, and he said, this is Elisha now talking, and he said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, or you shall not eat of it. Now there were four lepers, men at the entrance of the gate, and they said to one another, why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, we'll enter the city, the famine is in the city, and we'll die there. And if we sit here, we die also. Now therefore come, let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall only die. And they rose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. And when they'd come to the outskirts of the Syrian camp, to their surprise, no one was there. For the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses, the noise of a great army. So they said to one another, look, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us. Therefore they arose and fled at twilight and left the camp intact, their tents, their horses and their donkeys, and they fled for their lives. And when the lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank and carried from it silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent and carried some from there also and went and hid it. Then they said to one another, we're not doing right. is This day a day of good news and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household. So they went and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them saying, we went to the Syrian camp and surprisingly no one was there, not a human sound, only horses and donkeys tied in the tents intact. The gatekeeper called out and they told it to the king's household inside. So the king arose in the night and said to his servants, let me now tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we're hungry, therefore they've gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the camp and they'll catch them alive and get into the city. And one of his servants answered and said, please let several men take five of the remaining horses which are left in the city. Look they may either become like all the multitude of Israel that are left in it or indeed I say they may become like all the multitude of Israel left from those who are consumed. So let us send them and see. Therefore, they took two chariots with horses and the king sent them in the direction of the Syrian army saying, go and see. And they went after them to the Jordan and indeed all the roads was full of garments and weapons which the Syrians had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned and told the king and the people went out and plundered the tents of the Syrians. So a seah of fine flour was sold for a shackle and two seahs of barley for a shackle according to the word of the Lord. Now the king had appointed the officer on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate but the people trampled him in the gate and he died just as the man of God had said who spoke when the king came down to him. So it happened just as the man of God had spoken to the king saying, two seahs of barley for a shackle and a seah of fine flour for a shackle shall be sold tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria. And that officer had answered the man of God and said, now look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be? And he had said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes but you shall not eat it. And so it happened to him for the people trampled him in the gate and he died. The grass withers and the flowers fade but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is true truth and we pray that that truth would reach into the minds and hearts of your people this evening and we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, there's congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. You may recall from last week that I said from chapter 6 verse 24 all the way down through the end of chapter 7 where we're dealing with a text that hangs together. It's a single narrative. I chose to divide it up for practical reasons but I do want you to know this, the chapter break, chapter 7 is a bit arbitrary. Now on the previous Lord's Day, we focused on chapter 6 that highlights some of the implications of Israel's desperate predicament. The Syrian army had besieged Samaria which meant there was a blockade around the entire city, nothing going in and nothing going out. And just as the siege intended, it created in Samaria a catastrophic famine where something as unsavory and unappetizing as a donkey's head or dove dung cost an absolute fortune. So the people simply had nothing to eat. Now you'll remember from last week the implication of their predicament was much worse than donkey heads and dove dung. King Jehoram went out and he was inspecting the city walls and he encountered an evil. That's truly breathtaking. There were mothers who were killing and eating their children and it's important to pause here and remember what we learned last week, that Syria besieging Samaria, the famine and even that grotesque cannibalism were actually implications of Israel's predicament. Their predicament, their actual problem is that on account of their idolatry and disobedience, they had fallen under God's covenant curses. Now if you want to explore God's covenant curses as they relate to this passage, you can check them out at Deuteronomy 28 verses 52 through 57, Leviticus 26 verses 27 through 29. We looked at that passage last week. The point is God had given them over and he's pulled back his hand of restraint and we're Well even Jehoram seemed to be shocked by the events and he made a show of tearing his clothes so that people could see he seemed to be mourning and then underneath the clothes on the outside he was wearing sackcloth on the inside and that of course is a garment typically associated with repentance and his repentance was a sham. We know that because instead of seeking out God's prophet for a word of direction or a word of comfort or a word of deliverance, the king's impulse was to have Elisha murdered. He actually sent an assassin to take Elisha's head but of course the prophet of God to whom God reveals himself knew what was happening and barred the door from the messenger and assassin. And as the men held the door, the king showed up right on the heels of the assassin likely wanting to make sure that the job got done and we began to learn there near the end of chapter 6 that the reason Jehoram was filled with bitter anger toward Elisha is because he's the one who told the king that those events that Samaria was experiencing were the Lord's judgment and that he must repent and wait on the Lord. And now having learned what those women were doing Jehoram's done waiting and chapter 6 ends with Jehoram making it clear that from his perspective the one to blame for this whole sordid mass is Yahweh. It's his fault. Look there at the end of verse 33 in chapter 6. Surely this calamity is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? Most of Israel is living in spiritual darkness choosing to worship false gods. Samaria is enduring God's just covenant curses and they aren't at all bashful in telling their king that they're engaged in the worst imaginable kind of evil, cannibalism. And King Jehoram no longer has patience to wait for Yahweh and the reason he wants to take Elisha's head is because he can't get to Yahweh's head. And one of the most surprising truths that unfolds when we make the transition to chapter 7 as great and shocking as Samaria's sin is, as great and shocking as Jehoram's sin and impatience is, we come to something more shocking, something that's gloriously shocking. We learn that God's grace and patience eclipses their sin and impatience. We're getting a picture that God's grace is greater than all our sin. I mean the king is at Elisha's house to kill God's prophet and God's going to announce through his prophet a message of good news. That's why I entitled the message this week and last week Hope for the Cursed and that's what we pick up this evening. Look there at verse 1, it sets the stage. Then Elisha said hear the word of the Lord, thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time a saya of fine flour shall be sold for a shackle and two sayas of barley for a shackle at the gate of Samaria. He said don't miss this. Elisha provides a kind of double affirmation to make it clear what he's about to speak is a divine message. Hear the word of the Lord and then thus says the Lord. It was a way of saying this is God's word you're hearing, don't miss this. This isn't just my voice you're hearing, you're hearing God's voice. And the message from Yahweh is that in just 24 hours there will be relief. Prices will return to normal, commerce will resume at the marketplace, at the gate, at the entrance of the city. It's amazing news and it's nothing less than God's good news of deliverance to people who utterly don't deserve it. Of course the news is so amazing and so good that Jehoram's captain is convinced it's simply too good to be true. And listen to the poetic way he describes his skepticism. Look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven could this thing be? The captain sure knew how to turn a phrase didn't he? But his eloquence simply masks his rank on belief. God's made a glorious promise. He's offered good news in a context of utter despair and hopelessness but that's not for him. He can't make sense of it so he just settles in his doubt. God can't possibly do this thing. And by the way we can rightly criticize this captain but isn't that a thought that plagues our minds often? We hear the promises of God and in the back of our mind. We think God can't really do this thing can he? I think we can struggle with that as well. Well as hope begins to emerge here in chapter seven we also do get this word of judgment. Because where there's salvation there's going to be judgment. And so Elisha tells the captain you're going to see God pour out this promised abundance on his people. You'll see the promise fulfilled but you won't participate in the cursed estate. And we'll see when we get to the end of the chapter that not only is God's word of promise and salvation fulfilled but there's always his word of judgment so sort of hold that thought for a couple minutes. Now Elisha didn't tell Jehoram or his officer how God would fulfill his promise but we're sort of privy to what's going on. You know it's something they used to do in the older movies. Meanwhile over here and that's sort of what we get. Meanwhile over here we find God's rescue and deliverance is going to begin in an unlikely place and with some unlikely man. We're told in verse three that there are four lepers who are at the gate of the city. That's an interesting place to be because lepers were driven out of the city and they wouldn't have been normally hanging out at the gate. They would have been pressed beyond it. So you have to think it's because there's a blockade and because the gate's closed they've gotten over there. Because lepers ordinarily can't enter the city where God's people dwell because they're unclean. So the gates shut up tight. But here's the thing, they're in this weird predicament where they can't get into the city to get away from the Syrians. They're sort of pushed between the Syrian and Samaria and they're in a desperate place. And they start to take stock of their situation and they apply some leper logic. If they stay at the gate they'll die. They think if we manage to find a way to get into the city and this famine continues we'll die. On the other hand if we go to the Syrian camp we could very well die. I mean they may very well kill us but at least there, there's this slim possibility, just a slim possibility that they might let us live. So having weighed their options leper logic said we're going to the Syrian camp. And we're told there in verse five, and they rose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians and when they had come to the outskirts of the Syrian camp to their surprise no one was there. And what a surprise it must have been. They certainly thought when we get to the camp we're going to be in grave danger. But they're not. And they must have wondered what in the world has happened. And again we're privy to what God was doing. Yahweh had made the Syrians here what sounded like a great army, an army with a mighty cavalry and they heard these incredible sounds. It's hard to contemplate the volume, the decibels that must have been thundering outside of Samaria. And the Syrian soldiers they're sure that Jehoram has hired mercenaries to come from the Hittites and the Egyptians and the Syrians were so terrified at these loud sounds of soldiers and armies that they don't even bother breaking camp. They simply beat feet out of there leaving behind their tents, their livestock, even their gold and silver. What they heard struck terror in their hearts and then they fled for their lives. It's really something isn't it? And you'll remember we learned this just a couple weeks back. It shows us the story of the sovereignty of God over his enemies and ours. God had blinded the Syrians to protect Israel and especially to protect his prophets. God was feeding intelligent reports to Elisha again to protect his people and protect his prophets. Now he overcomes their enemies with the sounds of a great military. Again, behind this is God's willingness to fight for his people, to ensure this victory for his people. Whether it's blinding, deafening sounds, secret intelligence reports, God is fighting the battles of his people. And when the lepers, again they don't really know this. We know this, but the lepers don't know this. They enter the abandoned camp and they experience what will be for them. A life changing, transforming reversal of fortunes. In that moment they went from poverty to plenty. And basically they're granted all the benefits of the spoils of war without ever having to lift a finger to fight it. And as soon as they get their bellies full of food and drink they actually start stockpiling gold and silver. One moment these poor four lepers were destitute and the next moment they've got a fully funded retirement account. And this really is one of those passages that you read and you can't help but see all kinds of gospel reflections, right? I'm sure some of those have come to your mind. Let me just mention a couple. First, the lepers were transformed from a state of desperation to a state of salvation. They were little more than the walking dead, right? Now they have life and they have it abundantly and it was all God's doing. It was the sheer undeserved grace of God. These lepers didn't deserve kindness any from God and yet they're the objects of the exceeding kindness of God. And this certainly describes how God saves sinners, doesn't it? It's a little picture of that. How God saves sinners and grants us new life in Christ. Even when we were the walking dead, dead in trespasses and sin, God made us alive together with Christ by grace. You've been saved, Ephesians 2 .5. And we've been raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenly places so that in the coming age we will see the exceeding riches of God's grace for us in Christ, Ephesians 2 .7. Grace and riches are what deliver us from the dead lepers experienced. It's only a faint blip on the radar screen compared to the grace and riches God provides us in Christ. And again, we don't lift a finger and the victory is won for us and we enjoy that inheritance forever. A second way we see a gospel reflection is that the lepers experienced sovereign grace. Now it's obvious as day just reading through this passage that the lepers good fortune is clearly God's doing and all of God's doing. But there's a little detail in the text that seems to be inserted here to show us just how precisely God's orchestrating these events. It says in verse 5, the lepers left for the Syrian camp at twilight. And then we see in verse 7, it was right at twilight that the Syrians fled. By the way, this word twilight in the whole Samuel, Kings, Chronicle narrative is used three times. Once back in 1 Samuel 30 and then twice here. So this word is meant to catch our attention. The lepers left at twilight. The Syrians left at twilight. And perfect timing. It's not arbitrary, not accidental, and not coincidental. It's to highlight that God's working out the purposes of his will to bring a salvation to these lepers right down to the precise time that one leaves and the other shows up. God's superintending over the details to provide salvation and an undeserved inheritance to the lepers. And then we see and isn't that what we have? In Christ we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to him who works out all things according to the counsel of his will. Ephesians 1. There are a number of little gospel gems here, but I'll leave it there. The lepers, they're enjoying their new fortune. And some are very critical of the lepers because it took them a while to realize this, but they do realize something. They realize while they're enjoying God's blessing, there are still people inside Samaria who are starving. And so in verse 9 they said to one another, we're not doing right. This day is a day of good news and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household. Indeed it is a day of good news and they want to proclaim it. You know it's interesting, we heard something of that in Psalm 96 this morning, didn't we? Psalm 96 verse 2. Sing to the Lord, bless his name, proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. These lepers, they've experienced that good news and they want to proclaim it to the folks in Samaria. The word good news in Psalm 96 and in 2 Kings 7 is from the root word that means that's besor or besorah. And it's the Greek translation of that word is probably one you've at least heard echoes of. It's euangelizumai, it's the evangel, it's glad tithings, it's good news, it's gospel. And for these lepers having personally experienced this good news, it's their impulse to go and tell others and they know if we don't do that we'll be guilty of being stingy with the good gift God's given them. Now you could probably arrange a whole sermon around what this teaches about evangelism and frankly some very wonderful expositors have done that but we don't have time but you could ground a whole sermon on evangelism from this text and you wouldn't be stretching the text. You could describe how these lepers were beggars who had nothing to eat and all they were looking for was scraps and once they had been given bread they wanted to go and tell other beggars where they could find bread. You could work that kind of thing out or you could point out that the lepers were outsiders who are now saved and go to tell insiders, right? Because these are the people who weren't allowed into communion and fellowship with the covenant community and now they're the ones with the gospel. I was talking to someone very recently within the last couple of weeks and I mentioned to them that America receives the second highest number of missionaries of any country in the world, right? So again the harvest is plentiful and those of you who like and have been blessed by the ministry of Alistair Begg, he came to this country some 30 plus years ago to be a missionary and you know what he identified as his mission field? The evangelical church.
Simply Bitcoin
Fresh update on "radar" discussed on Simply Bitcoin
"The Daily Culture. Brought to you by Swan Bitcoin dot com. Swan is the best way to build your Bitcoin stack with automated Bitcoin savings plans and instant purchases serving clients of any size from ten dollars to ten million dollars. We love Swan because they incentivize self-custody and dollar cost averaging. What are you waiting for? Visit Swan Bitcoin dot com today. All right, I am excited for this one, guys. So Zia kind of gave you a TLDR on who he is in the beginning of the show. And personally, I am honored to have you on the show. I've told you this behind the scenes as well. Guys, if you don't know Zia's story, he's literally a freedom fighter in the flesh. You came across my radar, I think it was a year ago when you got arrested for literally being a freedom fighter, for speaking truth to power. So absolute kudos to you. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We want to talk about how and you touched on it earlier, how Bitcoin is being perceived right now in Iran and what you see on the ground right now. So what's the opinion of people over there in regards to Bitcoin? And what's your takes on this? Yeah, so this is what actually this is the main thing that people want to know about Iran with regard to Bitcoin. So how does it happen there? So how is it going on with Bitcoin here? It's like there's a lot of parts and there's a lot of aspects to this thing. So to talk about this topic. But the main thing is that you have been you had a glimpse of what happens in places like Iran, I guess not only Iran, maybe Khubab, maybe also is a bit different because of the legal gender thing and stuff. So you could imagine what happens in your own communities, but more, but bigger, but in more rapid numbers with more actually people grasping the, what do you call it? Like the advantage of having such a thing as Bitcoin in the world. So you could just look at your own community and see if this quicker, like 10 times what would happen. This is what's happening in Iran and I guess in other countries which are undergoing similar situations like the inflation situation in Iran. So one of the main things that we could start this talking about this thing is that the inflation situation. So it's like it's crazy. It's crazy. So I don't have for the lack of the better word. We just call it crazy because it's like you could just buy this phone or something for, let's say a month's work, a salary of a month's work for your mom and in a few months, not even years, it may take you like six months of income to just buy the phone. So this could just happen in a very short period of time and it's like killing people. It's crushing them. So it's very, very difficult for people to just overcome the situation here with the inflation state situation. So it's, and the inflation situation is due to a lot of stuff that you may have seen or read on the news about Iran. So there's a lot of stuff going on, which we will not be going into. It's a lot of, there's a lot of details and there's a lot of, but the inflation have made the lives of people very difficult here. And people want to grab hold of anything that could help them fight the inflation that could ease the impact of inflation on them. So whatever, if they could, if they have enough money to buy a car, they're going to buy a car. A car is not a tool here. It's not a, it's not actually a vehicle. So it's more like an investment. It's something which is very liquid. You could just, it's very easy to buy and sell a car here. So a lot of people see it as an investment, something to put their money into and expect not to lose value. But we know actually cars are not meant to do that, but it's very odd. It's happened. It is like this here in Iran. So a lot of people just stack their money in cars and there's people who buy land, gold, USD actually, cash, USD cash, they hold it here. And this is the tendency, the general tendency of people to have on how to deal with their money. And there's a number of people and it's not a small number actually. So we're going to talk about this later on so we could just discuss it. So how does this number look actually? But there's a lot of people who, so due to the accessibility of, let's use the word digital assets or cryptocurrency right now, because they see it like this. They don't think about Bitcoin. Maybe, maybe they don't think about Bitcoin in the first step, but they see this thing that is called cryptocurrency in the, like, I don't know, anywhere. I don't see social media on Instagram or anywhere, even maybe on the news or on some newspapers. They see this cryptocurrency thing and see, so how is it that a lot of people around me talk about it and they see that it's very easy to buy them and they are very accessible and they are another asset that you could buy and get rid of the local currency. So this is the, what do you call it? The, what was it? It was the Eorschom Gresham's Law. I don't remember the name. So that is like the bad money is in very rapid circulation and people just want to get rid of it. And they just go and buy anything that may actually excel in keeping their own, their value. And this, this goes on to the, this, this cryptocurrency space thing that actually is led by Bitcoin is actually have been introduced by Bitcoin, even in Iran, everywhere. And a little by little people figure out that they could day trade it or do some trading and shit like that. And they, they just harm their own. So they, they make their own situation even worse. Some, some of them do that because there's no, because they have this, they have been putting up with all of this difficult time and with the, all of this actually this, this difficult situation of dealing, keeping the value of their money. And they have been growing, there's been a growing trend of poverty and increasing trend that more and more people are becoming poorer and poorer every day here. And they just want to somehow get rich quick and anyone or anything that promises this to them, it may become, it may be very attractive to them. So they may be attracted to this get rich quick scheme that the cryptocurrency actually promises to them, but they soon find out that this doesn't happen. And we see, and now we get to Bitcoin, we see an ever increasing Bitcoin aware and inflation aware and more actually financially grown up people who are accepting Bitcoin and as a very, very good asset to be holding their, their wealth into. And this trend is happening and this is the only thing that I guess is shows that, that is very important actually to talk about, to see how the people under very severe inflation stricken situations and economies may go undergo a bit, a tough, tough process. Not a very easy to just try to come to their own senses and remember that there's no such thing as getting rich quick with these promises of, I don't know, shit coins and stuff like that and and actually anything. So there's a, there's a very big trend of like scams, not even not, not only crypto scams, anything scams here in Iran that, that is actually dependent on how people see the financial, their financial status and their financial situation. They see that they are getting poorer and they want to just get out of the situation and they are very greedy in that regard. And it depends, the scammers depend on that and there's tons of people getting scammed every day in any way you could imagine. And cryptos are another one of these scams. So and people, but just people when they encounter this thing, they get wiser and they know that this does not happen that fast and it is not a very easy solution. Even Bitcoin may not be a very good and easy solution. It's a bit of a tough one for most people who are not very well familiar with it, but we're getting there where we're teaching people, we're trying to let people know how to use it, how to store it and what are the things that make it important. So, yeah, this trend is very, very promising. I like it. So I didn't like this thing and what I saw in Iran, like, let's say two or three years ago, because there was a, there was a lot of, a lot of actually interest in check coins and cryptos and scams and all of that. And it was like maybe getting, starting to lose hope a bit, but I saw that, okay, people are now coming to their senses because they understand a bit. Whoopsie, I even see very, very trendy and TikTok style influencers in Iran who are talking about Bitcoin in a very, very correct way. And I'm really surprised. So how is it that this guy or this girl on TikTok who doesn't know anything actually about Bitcoin is saying the correct words about Bitcoin? It's like they have undergone an experience. They have actually felt that experienced it and saw what it means to the separation between Bitcoin and altcoins here.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from DAIM - The Investment Advisor Dedicated to Crypto
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey team, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation, BitGet, one of the world's leading copy trading cryptocurrency exchanges, yes indeed. What happens if you've got the funds to invest but you don't have the time to keep track of the market? You still want to make smart money moves? What do you do? Well, copy trading is a popular choice for beginner traders. You can shorten your learning curve by uncovering tips and strategies from more experienced traders. BitGet's copy trading platform has over 80 ,000 elite traders to choose from and 380 ,000 followers just like yourself who are already using the BitGet copy trading platform as a potential passive income stream. All it takes is one click, you can subscribe to an elite profitable strategist, set your limits, automate your orders and monitor their trades. I've got some links in the show notes below, one link will take you through to the BitGet sign up page, give you a VIP discount. So learn all about it for yourself, thanks to BitGet. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Brian Courchene. Brian is the founder of the Newport Beach based DAIM. I believe it's one of the first US registered investment advisors dedicated to crypto. I will learn more about this today. Welcome to the show, Brian. Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. Glad to be here. Glad to have you here, Brian. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. Big, good if you could please introduce yourself, I really love to hear a little bit about your personal and professional backstory and the lead up to founding DAIM. Yeah, yeah. So we're here in the United States in California, specifically in Newport Beach. And where I come from in the background is I got my start on Wall Street, actually on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I got with a guy and started writing paper tickets and backing up their floor traders. And then I went on to be a trader in the pit there on the options side. So I was there for 13 months. And then from there, I worked at different broker dealers in New York City, specifically as a vol sales specialist. And that was great. And in 2014, I came across Bitcoin on my own research. October, I made an allocation to it. It was the first one. And from then on, I was kind of the go -to guy. Maybe nobody had a position on the floor, nobody had a position in the building. And I was a guy that people came to when they had questions about the space and this grew and grew and grew. And then in 2017, in the early part of the year, pre -ICO run -up, I had realized that there was a need for a properly licensed advisor and asset manager in the space. Everything that was out there was self -directed. Coinbase, for example, you go on Coinbase, it's all up to you to move your own money, decide what to buy, when and how, and people just needed a human help to this. And so what I realized was that there was also a larger allocation that people wanted to make to the space and they wanted to do it with someone that maybe had some kind of licensing that they could fall back on or recourse. And so I left the firm that I was working at in New York City and moved here to Newport Beach to start building this business to be the first of its kind licensed registered investment advisor in the United States to advise and manage assets for individuals. And so as fast track as that sounded, as simple as it was, it was a bit more of a challenge than that at the time when we were dealing with the regulators and getting the business approved, it took us into 2018 and for people who know prices, the price of Bitcoin had come off from the all -time highs in 2017. January 1st, it was $13 ,500. And then by the time we got into May, it was sub $10 ,000. And so the regulators kicked back a little bit saying they didn't want to license the first of its kind advisor in the space. That was kind of defeating because I'd spent quite a bit of money in my own Bitcoin to build this and get it going. But I didn't stop there. And I basically made a case with them saying, look, you got to approve this business. There's nothing like it out there that can actually help people. And I'm probably the most qualified thing you can get right now. I had the Series 4, which is an options principle. I had the Series 24, which is a compliance officer. I had owned Bitcoin again since 2014. I had the Series 65 and I said, people need help in this space. And we ended up getting the license. It was actually the next day after that phone call. May 31st, 2018. And since then now, yeah, we advise and manage crypto positions for individuals in the United States and corporations. Yeah, fantastic. So DAIM, of course, just stands for Digital Asset Investment Management. You say then that you are helping individuals with their crypto positions and allocations and maybe even their decision making. Just talk us through a little bit more about what that means, Brian. Who are the kind of different target markets or customer segments that your firm services? Yeah, so a typical client for us is generally a business owner in the United States, quite busy with what he's got going on, but wants to have an allocation to the space. Generally, something much larger than a few thousand bucks or 10 grand that somebody would on typical a exchange, Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, they want to make a larger allocation, maybe something in the hundreds of thousands or even millions to the space. And so they get with us. Things look very familiar from kind of an onboarding standpoint to what their traditional investment advisor might look like. And then we have the license check where they can look us up on the SEC's website. And then we take them through a new client profile where we get to learn a little bit about and them we can then go with them about, okay, this is the allocation we think you should make. Maybe sometimes we've got to walk them back from being too big. And then this is the portfolio we want to put you in. And then from there, it leads to usually a transfer of some sorts from like a traditional investment management firm, Schwab, Fidelity, stuff like that. So we handle the transfer, the funds land, and then we put in place our model portfolio, which is our best thesis on the space. And then we manage their assets according to that. And we actually run that across all of our discretionary clients. So our clients, not only do they get an advisor and a manager sitting on top with a license, but also a portfolio that gets professionally managed, kind of like a fund. The difference is that we run a flat fee and we don't add the performance fee on top of it. And so from there, once they're onboarded and invested, they get 24 seven view access into the account. They get regular statements. If it's a taxable account here in the United States, we work on things like tax loss harvesting. Should that be needed? 10 99 beneficiaries. And then we go into the tax advantage accounts. So we can do things like IRAs, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP IRAs, Roth 401ks. And then we even do a corporate 401k where a business can put in place a plan for their employees that gives them the ability to have up to 10 % in pure Bitcoin alongside traditional mutual funds. And this is something actually we're really excited about coming out of like a pilot program. And it's something we want to expand into market. Yeah, I mean, but to jump into their first thing, Brian, I guess, yeah, the idea of having a even a small allocation into people's 401k funds would be obviously a good thing for Bitcoin and presumably a good thing for individuals that do have Bitcoin in their 401ks if over time Bitcoin does appreciate. But do you see, is there a demand for this and you can see this growing over time? Yeah, so the 401k market is quite large. The addressable market is just massive and there's just nothing servicing really alternative investments. And that's where Bitcoin comes into being kind of like a liquid easier alternative investment instead of something like real estate or VC funds. And so when we put the plan out and we went and looked for pilots for this, we thought that it was going to come from mostly crypto native companies or tech startups. But what we found was quite different. We found that interest came from traditional businesses, law firms, construction companies. And when we put the plan in place, when you look at like who wants to participate and who elects for Bitcoin and how much, you actually see it's kind of the crowd that's over 40 and professional and people that you wouldn't think would be so technology native, but it's people that kind of understand like you got to take a little bit of risk and Bitcoin's been around for a while and why not go for that? Because it actually does improve the Sharpe ratio of these portfolios. And so, yeah, it's been surprising to us, which is actually a good thing, because eventually the people that are in the younger generations that are in tech startup or crypto events will get older. They'll have more money in their 401Ks and eventually they'll have the option when they're ready to participate in this. Yeah, very well said. So you said also, Brian, that you almost manage like kind of like a fund, which is DAIM's, I guess, crypto portfolio thesis. Right. So that's correct. I wonder how much of that you're prepared to talk about in terms of, I guess, what that portfolio fund breakdown in terms of crypto assets would look like. And it's notoriously hard, obviously, to beat Bitcoin just with a buy and hold strategy over a kind of long time zone. What's your approach to trying to, I guess, beat the market on behalf of your clients? Yeah, I can talk about this quite a bit. So on the structure side of it, it's set up as SMA here in the United States. Separately managed accounts. So all of our clients actually have their own accounts and the assets are not co -mingled, but we do manage them with an overlay. And that way we can get the trades done and rebalancing as needed. And the great thing about that is it gets back to us being liquid at any time, unlike having a lockup period with a fund. And so when we have that structure, then we move into being able to manage these assets quite easily and then offer our clients the liquidity that's needed. And then as the thesis, when I first started the business and we were running our model portfolio back in 2018, it was Bitcoin only. And we looked at the space as we want to have low turnover. We don't want to incur a lot of trading fees. We don't want to incur a lot of taxes in these accounts, but we also understand that being long crypto in itself is the best way to get multiples on your return. And then when you go to allocate away from Bitcoin and go to seek alpha, you got to see if you're going to have a strategic outperformance. And then what seems easy to say now, in the beginning of 2020, we had done our research on Ethereum and the upgrades that were to come, and we decided to make a 20 % allocation to Ethereum at that time from the book, which worked out really well for us. And it got to a point to where we've allocated away and Bitcoin shrunk to be a little less 60 % of our portfolio. And then we allow these assets to take course. We look at everything from a fundamental standpoint. When we do use technicals, it's really on just deploying and pulling out of positions. And so at the position we're at now, I should back up. Last year, we had closed out a majority of the Ethereum position into the upgrade and went into cash for a while, which helped us through a bit of the downturn last year and gave us capital to start redeploying at the beginning of this year. And so in our search for alpha, we haven't quite found what we like outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. So we redeployed into Bitcoin, balanced the book 90 % Bitcoin, 10 % ETH. And now we're looking to make some strategic allocations away from both of those as we see us kind of being in the trough zone here, coming out of the bear market and entering a bull market. Yeah, fascinating. And it's interesting, Brian, that you say it's very difficult to find compelling crypto asset allocations outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I suppose being so heavily overweight Bitcoin at the moment looking forward, I suppose that is probably due to the two big catalysts, two big narratives that are around Bitcoin at the moment. I'm talking, of course, of the fourth Bitcoin halving coming around March, April next year. And of course, the BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin application. So yeah, I'd love to understand just how you think about those two data points and perhaps their potential to make Bitcoin interesting again. Yeah. And there's something to touch on, too. What you started off with is looking at all the other investments outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so I'll hop into that in the second half of this answer. But when it comes to the halving and the BlackRock ETF, the halving is an event that's always on the radar. And that has tend to seem price appreciation somewhat after the event. And this stuff has become well known. But what really changed was seeing BlackRock come into the space. And that was further affirmation to us that we are entering a bull market. And there are some very big players that think that there's going to be severe demand and drastic price increases in the space. And so that's another data set to us that says, okay, we don't want to be in cash anymore. We do need to be invested even though we cannot find something at the moment outside of Bitcoin and ETH. We at least want to participate in the market and be in Bitcoin because the narrative can change very quickly in this space. And so it comes to things like this, too. If you look at like key figureheads in the space and their price predictions, you got Arthur Hayes at $70 ,000. Guy Kiyosaki at $100 ,000. You've got Novogratz at $500 ,000. Kathy Woods is at $1 million. I think she might have revised her to like $1 .3 million, but the end of 2023. And so that narrative, micro strategy, acquiring more, there's just little things on the back end. And then you could see something drastic happening. And you got to be ready for that. In the next month, there could be some sort of approval for one of the Bitcoin ETFs. If that doesn't happen in January, there's actually talk that maybe multiple Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States could get approved all at once. You have things that maybe Gary Gensler gets recalled. Like these events could happen. What we think is that the bad events have already happened. We went through that last year. We went with that with Luna. We had FTX and we had Celsius. The bad actors have been weeded out. And so any kind of regulatory stuff that comes in, we think won't have that drastic of an impact. We saw XRP do well in its case. And we think that the setup for new news and better news is on the horizon. And then you look at the liquidity on it. It's something that can vacuum very quickly to the upside. And then all that takes is the news agencies to just flip and go from doom and gloom to price appreciation. And it will show in Google and it will start to result in prices. So, yeah, that's our thoughts. And those are two big catalysts. I'd say more so the Bitcoin ETF over the halving at this point. Yeah, very well said. And yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, Bitcoin is, it doesn't seem like it now because Bitcoin really has been kind of trading in the range that it's in at the moment, just somewhere between $26 ,000 and $30 ,000, shall we say, for well, for months, really. And so it does feel like, you can call it what you want, the sort of extended bear market, the accumulation zone of the next bull market. But it is very... There's also, there's two known sellers in the market almost at a regular basis. The US government's still selling Bitcoin. And you have FTX that's starting to unload some of their Bitcoin. And so you're getting matched up with, you know, that's why you see this almost sideways slide, you know, and it's disconnect and lack of correlation is because you got these two just unloading and acquiring and just trimming. And then any news could just set this off. But the other thing is that it's possible that our government stops selling at the end of this year and takes a break. They could continue, but if they take a break, well, there's one less seller in the market. And then who knows, maybe what needs to be done in this tranche for FTX also completes as they're projected to. And then now you're relieving sell pressure. You get a Bitcoin approval in Q1 and this thing turns into a vacuum to the upside. Do you, I mean, I wonder what it's like, Brian, to be in your position, like perhaps for, I'm sure you have clients who came in perhaps during the bull market of 2021. And, you know, it's hard for people who experience their first crypto bear market. And, you know, as much as the velocity is intense on the upside, it's also pretty disquieting on the downside. What do you say to people who have sort of started with you in the good times, but now you've got to manage not only their assets through the bear market, but I suppose, you know, their expectations and emotions as well. Yeah, great question, Andy. And it brings me back to the second half of last year and just the many conversations we had with a lot of our clients and, you know, talking about the space and reassuring about our business partners and how well they're here and how good standing they're in and us. And when we onboard clients from the beginning five years ago, even through the bull market in 2021, we go over downside slides with them and we talk about, you know, bad scenarios. You know, hey, you know, how do you feel if this is going to be down 80%, right? And we have those conversations early on when there's no money at play and there's no emotions. And we make that plan and you tend to find that most people can handle it. There could be a few that say, you know, I want to exit and close out. But, you know, now that you have that conversation and it's kind of like out of the way, you can reflect back to, hey, this is the plan we put in place and this is what we're going to do. And for some of those, you know, we can do, if they're a brokerage account, I mentioned earlier, we can do tax loss harvesting. So that's a way to, you know, take these losses and offset it, you know, against future tax payments. And there's an advantage to that. And now when they stay in the game, they allow us to tax loss harvest and prices come back, you get to see some of these get back into the green and they just had a nice, you know, discount to what they're going to be paying in future taxes. And so we try to find things like that. Other things that we do too is, you know, for IRAs, we do stuff unique. We're able to stake in those. In our model portfolios performance, we've actually outperformed Bitcoin by about 30 % by strategically allocating away and pulling back. So that helps as well too, adding units to the account. And we look at this space and can say like, hey, you know, in a year where asset prices came off drastically, we had some cash because we sold earlier. So we're waiting to deploy that. We can tax loss harvest what was down and around. And we're keeping up regular communications with you guys. You know, we're tapping the street to get, you know, insight and affirmation that everybody's in good standing. And that's what really comes to good customer services, just trying to be in front of everybody and open for human communication. Because that's something that most of the businesses in the space really self -directed. I mean, there's no one to talk to in DeFi, right? You can't call any of the businesses. And even in the typical exchanges, it can be hard to have a human to talk to. And that's where we pride ourselves in being available for our clients alongside running the model portfolio. Fantastic. And talk to us, Brian, in terms of I guess the success of DAIM, your business. I'd love to understand any sort of metrics that you watch in terms of the growth in your user base, your clients, your assets under management. I assume things are ticking along and growing over time. Yeah, so when we started the business in 2018, we started off with zero clients. That's the way the regulators wanted to do it. No assets under management. And then a few regulatory audits in 2019, because they liked that we put crypto advisor and manager on there. So that slowed some growth. But then coming into the back half of 2020, we definitely caught a groove. We were able to develop some narrative and marketing in the confines of still Facebook and stuff, not allowing to have crypto advertising, but through our word of mouth and in our network and hand -to -hand discussions. And so we grew the business to over 200 accounts. And really when we look back and we analyze the business today and we look at the AUM and how it fluctuated and the number of clients, I think a lot of companies will see a drastic drawdown in AUM and they will also see a drastic drawdown in number of accounts. Now their accounts might still have a dollar value, but I mean, meaningful accounts, anything over 10 grand. Whereas we'll see that we've trimmed flat through the back half of 2021 and now are slowly increasing. And I think the temperature changed. It felt like right around March that individuals were open to getting back in the space, kind of that really bad hangover from November was behind them. And so I think things are going to get even more favorable for us.
Evening News with Art Sanders
Fresh update on "radar" discussed on Evening News with Art Sanders
"Till this is America in the morning a shutdown was averted in the final Both the House and Senate compromised on a bill to continue to fund the government, but not without possible casualties Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is vowing to oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker And even though aid was stripped from the bill Ukraine's foreign ministry says US Borkiev remains strong despite news that a stopgap spending measure passed by Congress does not Include new financial support for the war -torn country correspondent Mimi Montgomery picks up the story. This is a bridge CR and leader McConnell and I have agreed to continue fighting For more economic and security aid for Ukraine we support Ukraine's efforts To defend its sovereignty against Putin's aggression a Ukraine foreign ministry spokesperson says American support for his country remains strong despite news that the stopgap budget bill won't Financial include new support for Kyiv this is because ongoing aid programs won't affect billions of dollars of donations already pledged the speaker an overwhelming majority of the Congress have steadfastly Supported Ukraine to defend itself against the aggression and brutality of the Russians attack on women and children in Addition to the military in Ukraine, there's no Ukraine funding this agreement despite I did not believe we could let millions of Americans go through the pain of a government shutdown, but the mission of new aid racist concerns as US President Biden stresses in a speech we cannot under any circumstance allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted I fully expect the speaker to keep his commitment to secure Passage and support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression and brutality Ukraine relies heavily on Western support in its fight against Russia's ongoing invasion and President Zelensky recently told US lawmakers additional aid is crucial for continuing the fight you can count on our support we will not walk away the vast majority of both parties I'll say it again Democrats and Republicans Senate and House support helping Ukraine and the brutal aggression that is being thrust upon them by Russia Stop playing games. Get this done. I'm Mimi Montgomery. It's 21 New York Congressman Democrat Jamaal Bowman admitted to pulling a fire alarm he says by accident in the Canon office building just prior to the house taking up the vote shutdown to avert members a government of the Republican Party were outraged and are calling for Bowman to be expelled an action that fellow New York Congresswoman Nicole Malayotakis vowed to introduce Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez said what Bowman did was wrong but chastised her Republican counterparts for not going after the GOP's George Santos who's been accused of fraud money and lying to Congress US Capitol police are investigating the incident which was caught on building surveillance video and cause concern throughout the Capitol complex California Governor Gavin Newsom has made his choice to fill the now vacant seat of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, Fonza Butler, the president of Emily's List. She was not originally on the radar of possible choices. Meanwhile, tributes continue to pour in as many Senate Democrats and Republicans as well as leadership House have found something they can agree on the admiration of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. and correspondent Shelly Adler reports it was a historic figure trailblazer for him and a great friend Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment from gun safety to protecting civil liberties. The country's going to miss her dearly. Dianne was a trailblazer and her beloved home state of California and our entire nation are better for her dogged advocacy and diligent service. We lost a giant in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking on the Senate floor followed by Minority Leader Mitch Connell. Over the past three decades the senior senator from California was also the steady hand leading sensitive and consequential work as head of the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Her name became synonymous with advocacy for women and issues of water infrastructure to counter drug efforts. GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine. I rise with great sadness today to honor my friend and our colleague Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein died Thursday night at her home in Washington DC at the age of 90. Dianne Feinstein was generous, she was gracious, she was thoughtful, she was kind. There were many times that she made the roll call in the Senate Judiciary Committee in the last year or two when I know it was an extraordinary sacrifice. She was going to show up because that was her responsibility. I respected her so much for that. And committee in a divided 11 to 10, I needed her. She knew it. She was there. She answered the call. The raising of the first woman elected mayor, even coming from a different party, inspired women from both sides of the aisle to seek elected office and to have their voices heard. I'm Shelley Adler. General Mark Milley is taking some heat for swipes at his former commander in chief. Washington correspondent Magani soccer reports. We don't take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the and Constitution we take an oath to the idea that is America and we're willing to die to protect it. At his retirement ceremony, the outgoing joint chiefs chairman said the U .S. military is unique. It does not take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. We don't take to an oath a wannabe dictator. And then there was Milley administering the oath to successor C .Q. Brown emphasizing a few words that will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Against Constitution the of the United States of America. Against all enemies. Against all enemies foreign and domestic. Without saying his name, they were not so subtle jabs that Donald Trump, who named Milley chairman four years ago and last week condemned him as a treasonous train wreck whose actions and times by gone would have been punishable by death. General Milley is a lazy guy who's not very smart, but what General Milley did to China and with China is a disgrace. And there are many that we call it treason. Some saw that as a threat, prompting Milley to ensure his family as enough protection. Sagar Meghani at the White House. 16 till when we return on America in the morning, Trump's gag order after these messages. The
The Tennis.com Podcast
A highlight from Eric Diaz's Journey From the University of Georgia to Coaching Rising American Alex Michelsen
"Welcome to the official tennis .com podcast featuring professional coach and community leader Kamau Murray. Welcome to the tennis .com podcast. We are here with Eric Diaz. You remember the name? Eric is son of Manny Diaz, coach of Alex Mickelson, Werner Tan, and right now has his own thing called tier one performance out in the Irvine area. Welcome to the show, Eric. How's it going? Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on. Great to be on. So I interviewed your dad probably about 2 months ago. That was, you know, we were poking fun about him redshirting Ethan Quinn, you know, not choosing not to play Ethan Quinn later. You know he wins NCAA the next year. It was kind of like, what were you thinking, right? Yeah, one of those tough ones. Oh yeah, it was kind of like, did you think he wasn't ready? Was he, did he think he wasn't ready? Like, you know, you probably could have won NCAA twice. That kind of thing but you obviously came from good tennis pedigree. So, I guess the first obvious question was what was it like growing up with your dad being Manny? You know, because I, it's hard not to take work home, right? Let's just put it that way. You're a tennis coach and a child of a tennis dad. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think anybody that's been in tennis for a long time knows it's kind of a lifestyle a little bit. You know, there's definitely being the tennis coach and kind of, you know, working toward things but it's also, I don't know, the sport takes so much of you that sometimes, you know, it just feels like, you know, it's second nature. It's kind of a part of it. So, I mean, growing up in Athens, growing up around Dan McGill Complex was always a treat. That was back when NCAA's were kind of always hosted in Athens. So, I got to watch, you know, all the college greats. I grew up watching the Bryan brothers get, you know, sadly then they were kind of pegging some of our guys in doubles matches but, you know, it was really cool being able to sit court side, watch those guys and then, you know, be able to watch them on TV a little bit later. Really cool. Really cool experience growing up. Now, from a junior career, did your dad coach you your whole career or did he hire private coaches to sort of teach you technique? Because I know, you know, coaching at a program like UGA, it is very demanding and sometimes the children of the tennis coach lose out to the actual players and the people who are paying. So, did he coach you? How was that? You know, he coached me. I think he tried to coach me but at the same time, he also didn't want to put too much pressure on me to like, you know, really play tennis and go in. So, he kind of let it be my own thing. I started, I actually went to Athens Country Club, great little spot on the outside of Athens. Alan Miller was the main coach there. So, he helped me out a lot. He actually, he was on my dad's first, you know, assistant coaching team where they won a national title. I think he paired with Ola who now obviously has been with USGA for a while. I think they played doubles and I think they won a doubles title as well. So, I think Alan was a part of the first team championship and then he was also, you know, he won a doubles title there too. I think he might have won two. So, I spent a lot of time around him which was also, it was really cool. You know, it was a guy who was a part of the Georgia tennis family. Athens is really tight -knit like that and so it's special to be a part of that family both, I guess, through blood and through, you know, the alumni. It's cool. Now, let me ask you, did you ever consider going anywhere else, right? I mean, successful junior career, one of the top players in the nation, tons of options. You know, it could be like, you know, there's always sort of the, oh, his dad's going to give him a scholarship, right? You saw with Ben Shelton, you know, Brian Shelton. Obviously, he's going to look out for his kid. Did you ever aspire to like go to another top program or UCLA or Texas or Florida? I think growing up, you know, because I got to see all those teams play. You know, I remember in 1999, I looked up this guy who, he played number one for UCLA. I don't know, this guy showed up. I'm a little kid and he had half of his head was blue and the other half was gold and, you know, UCLA was firing it up. They were really good at the time. I remember that was my dad's first national title in 99. And, you know, ever since then, I really, you know, I looked up to the guys. Every now and then, I got to sneak on to a little travel trip and, you know, I got to see what it was like. But, I mean, for me, it was always Georgia. I thought Athens was a special place, you know, getting to see the crowds that they get there and being able to kind of just see the atmosphere of everybody caring about each other. You know, it was cool looking at other teams. You know, the Brian brothers had the cool Reebok shoes, you know, the UCLA guy with the different hair. But at the end of the day, it was always the dogs. It was always Georgia. So, I was really lucky when I got to be a part of that team and I got to kind of wear the G that, you know, through my junior years, I was always wearing it, you know, but I guess it was a little bit different when you're actually, you know, on the team and representing. I think it's a different feeling. Yeah. So, if you didn't go into tennis, what else would you be doing? Like, you know, I didn't, you know, I'm obviously coaching now, but I didn't go right into coaching. I went to work into pharmaceuticals like marketing, sales, you know, finance. It's always, I always find it interesting to say if I wasn't coaching, I got my degree, I would be doing this. Yeah. You know, if I was a little bit more prone, I think to just loving schoolwork and loving studying, you know, everybody's always told me that I would make a pretty good lawyer just because I'm a bit of a contrarian. I like to argue. I like to challenge everybody that's kind of around me. So, I'm always looking for a good argument. So, I'll go with that. Everybody's always told me, you know, maybe you should have been a lawyer. You argue a Hey, lot. well, I'm sure, I'm sure your tennis parents, right? The parents of the academy probably don't like that one, right? They like to be in control. They have the last say and be contrarian. A lot of the time they do. A lot of the time they do. Yeah. So, you're sort of like stepping out, right? Out of the shadow and you're now on the west coast out there in the with Irvine area tier one performance and quite honestly, making your own name. I know you've had opportunity to coach Alex Mickelson as well as, you know, Lerner, Tan who are both like doing real well, both like main draw this year at US Open. Tell me about the process of moving way west. Yeah. And starting your own thing. Well, you know, it kind of started with, you know, I took that leap and I moved away from home for, you know, the first time because obviously being born and raised and going to school at UGA. I took my first chance and I went to Boise State and I worked under Greg Patton for a year who I'd heard great things about and, you know, all were true. He's a great guy. I thought it was a fantastic experience. So, I did that for a year and then over the summer, the UGA swim coach's son that I kind of grew up with, he was in Newport and so I kind of came to visit and then, you know, all of a sudden the opportunity to be coaching out here, you know, came about and, you know, I did my due diligence a little bit. You know, I looked at the old tennis recruiting pages and, you know, I'm looking at all the talent over the last like 20 years and, you know, statistically, you look at the list and you're like, okay, you know, if I'm in this area and I give myself, you know, the right opportunities and I, you know, learn how to coach properly, you know, I feel like I've had some pretty good experience from some good mentors. You know, then I kind of thought, you know, okay, maybe I can kind of control my own destiny out here a little bit and, you know, over time, it's taken a lot but, you know, over time, I feel like I did get myself some pretty decent opportunities. So, when you first laid eyes on Mickelson, how old was he? He was 12. He was coming out to some point place. It was the first place I kind of rented courts. It was this old rundown beat up club but beautiful. There were some trees there. Nobody wanted it. The courts were kind of run down and everyone's like, oh no, nothing there and I was like, I'll take it. So, you know, it gave me space. It gave me courts. It gave me the ability to kind of try and market. I made things cheap so I could get a lot of kids out there and try and get a competitive environment going and luckily, you know, had a good bit of talent out there where, you know, the kids kind of attracted the kids and I was this young coach, 23, 24 and, you know, over time, you know, people started to kind of gain trust and realize, you know, this guy isn't that bad. So, you know, over time, it kind of, you know, worked in my favor and, you know, everything kind of worked out. I eventually switched clubs to a nicer one and, you know, you move up. You earn your stripes. Now, when you saw him, did you initially see, you know, like super talent because he won our ADK this summer and, you know, it was full of Steve Johnson, Su -Woo Kwong. It was Ethan Quinn. It was other names, right? Kanee Shakuri. And Alex, okay, you know, he got the USTA wildcard. He's a young kid. You know what I mean? Like, sort of under the radar and then he wins the whole tournament in finals Newport on the grass like a week later. So, did you see it right away? Was he like a typical kind of 12 -year -old throwing his racket, having tantrums? What was he like at 12? Alex has always turned on tantrums. But, you know, when he was 12, he was good. But, you know, I'll be honest, there were a handful of kids out there that, you know, Kyle Kang, who's had a lot of success. I saw him. Sebastian Goresney, who Alex won doubles with. There were a handful of others and, I mean, Alex, they were, he was good. If I thought that he would be this good, you know, at this point, I think I'd I don't think I saw that. But, you know, you definitely see that this kid's capable of playing at a pretty good level while he's young. And then, you know, as the years kind of go and then as you sort of see him and his personality kind of develop, you kind of recognize, you know, this, you know, this isn't too normal of a 16, 17, 18 -year -old kid. And then, you know, sure enough, eventually the results followed, which was pretty fun to watch. Yeah, I mean, I felt it was interesting because he was here with like his friend. Yeah. You know, not even like a coach, trainer, physio, nothing. Like him and his homeboy. Yeah. He didn't look like he played tennis. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it was like, it was interesting to show up without, you know, completing against guys who are here with like coaching that they're paying six -figure salaries and who are scouting, right? And for him to kind of move through the draw, honestly, I mean, you know, maybe he split sets once. Yeah. It was actually really interesting. He's an extremely competitive kid. And so, you know, throughout the last few years kind of as we've traveled to some events and as he's gone to some like by himself, you know, the whole understanding is, okay, how well do you really understand, you know, your day -to -day process? How well are you able to, you know, nowadays, you know, with challengers, everything you can stream, you can watch. So, you know, both myself and, you know, Jay, the other coach that's here and helping him out, you know, we watch, we communicate. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it was one of those big decisions, okay, are you going to go to college or are you going to go pro? And he's kind of weighing those two things. And it's, you know, if you really think you want to be a pro, show me. And so it's one of those things, luckily, when he's young, you know, you have the, you know, it's kind of freedom. If he loses some matches, okay, you're young. If, you know, you win some matches, okay, great. You're young. So it's one of those things where, you know, we really kind of wanted to see, you know, what he's able to do sort of on his own. How well can he manage emotionally? How well can he, you know, create some game plans and stick to his day -to -day routines? And he, I would say he passed. And did he officially turn pro? He officially turned pro, yeah. Yeah. So I know UGA was going to be where he was going. I know he was undecided this summer, but UGA was going to, was there a little bit of an inside man kind of happening here, right? You know, I mean, you know, I think that, you know, I'll definitely say, I think he had some exposure to hearing about, you know, some Georgia greatness. I think that for sure. But, you know, I'll say it was his decision. Ultimately, I tried to not put too much pressure or expectation on where he was going to go. You know, I think Georgia has a lot to offer. So I think, you gone that route, I think it would be, you know, I don't think we can really fail if, you know, you're going and you're trying to be a tennis player and that's a place you choose. I think it's a pretty good place. Now tell us about Lerner Tan. I'll admit as a player that I hadn't had the opportunity to watch too much. I had not watched him in the challenges at all. But was he also sort of in the program at a young age or did he just sort of come later on? My partner actually, you know, kind of helped him when he was young because Levitt Jay used to be incorporated at Carson, which was kind of where Lerner kind of had his, you know, beginnings. He was a little bit more, I guess I'll say, you know, his talent was Federation spotted, I guess you could say as to where Alex was kind of, you know, the guy on the outside a little figuring his own way. Lerner was kind of the guy that everybody kind of thought was, you know, the guy. Right. And so, you know, it's been fun kind of watching him, you know, see his transition, you know, from juniors to now, you know, kind of becoming, you know, the top of juniors, you know, winning Kalamazoo the last two years and his transition. It's been fun to see. So, you know, I've seen a lot of him out of the last, you know, two and a half to three years. So it's been, it's definitely been a different transition. I feel like, you know, it's a little bit fire and ice there. You know, Alex is the fiery one screaming a good bit and Lerner is the silent killer. So it's, they're definitely different, which I think, you know, is pretty refreshing and it's kind of cool to see them both have success in their own accord. So tell us about Tier 1 then. So how many courts, obviously you grew up, I mean, like, you know, I started in the park years ago, right? In Chicago Park, right? And now I got 27 courts. But tell us about Tier 1 performance now. Where are you? How many courts do you now have? How many kids are you serving? Yeah, we're in Newport Beach right now, which is great. Weather's nice. We have, right now, we're running our program out of only five ports. It's not that big. You know, we take a lot of pride in just kind of being individually, you know, development based. I feel like if you're in our program, you're going to have, you know, a good bit of time from the coaches. You're probably going to have a chance to hit with some of the top guys. We try to be really selective with who we kind of have. Just because in Southern California, it's really difficult to, you know, get your hands on a ton of courts. There's so many people in tennis. There's only a few clubs now. You know, pickleball, even at our club right now, you know, pickleball is booming. You know, so many people are playing. It's keeping clubs alive, which, you know, I think is nice. But at the same time, I would love to see, you know, a lot of tennis courts and tennis opportunity. But, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, man, pickleball is definitely taking over. You see clubs getting rid of one court, two courts, and they think that it's not that big of an impact. But I mean, two courts really makes a difference in terms of being able to spread kids out, get them more time, get more balls and more balls at the time. But it's, you know, I think in tennis, if we want to fight them off, we've got to market better and we've got to grow, right? They're in this growth sort of stage and we're sort of stagnant, you know, so it's not like we're not leaving the club with a lot of choices other than to diversify, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let me ask you that. So, you've obviously had two kids that are going on. What do you tell that next parent, whose kid's 14, right, may get to see learner Alex come to the academy and number one, they want to homeschool, right, or ask you whether or not they should homeschool or B, you know, whether or not they should choose to go to college or, you know, turn pro. How are you advising parents? Because I get the question all the time. Should we homeschool, right? Should we do whatever? And I always, you know, the answer is always, it depends. Yeah. But what would be your answer in terms of homeschooling to train? Well, look, I definitely think that if your primary goal is to be a tennis player and I think, you know, if you're an athlete and that's kind of what you want to do, I think there's a lot of benefit in homeschooling just because, you know, it enables you to travel. You know, if I get to the ITF level, you know, I need to be able to travel. Those tournaments start on Monday and they go through Friday. So, you know, if I'm in a regular school, if I'm a high school kid, you know, that's a pretty difficult life for me to be able to justify or to, you know, be able to get my excused absences and stuff like that. You know, we're definitely big. You know, if you show me a 14 and under kid and I feel like I had pretty good experience in this just because I saw a lot of kids from the age of 12 to 14, you know, I got to see an entire kind of generation out of SoCal and a lot of them were pretty good. You know, the one thing I think, you know, when you're 12, 13, 14 years old, I think the primary thing kind of for level, obviously it matters how you're doing it, but I think the primary thing is the repetition. You know, I saw a ton of kids where they had a bunch of practices and I knew that that kid probably, you know, had 30%, 40 % more time than some of the other kids. And, you know, sure enough, that kid is more competent at keeping the ball in play. You know, they're able, you know, they've just seen and touched more balls. So, you know, they're going to make more balls. I think it's a balance. I think it really depends on the parents. I think it really depends on the kid. And I think it depends on the environment that they'll be in if they are going to be homeschooled. You know, I will say that, you know, we've had a handful of kids kind of switch from high school to homeschooled and they're in our program. But I feel like there's still strong social aspects in our program. You know, all the boys are tight. They compete a lot. They, you know, I feel like they get their social, you know, they go to lunch. And just kind of our standards are really high. I think this past year we had five kids that graduated that all went to IVs. So, you know, it's totally possible whether you're homeschooled or whether you're in school, I think, to, you know, kind of pursue academic excellence. I think, you know, just because you're doing one thing and not the other, I don't think that that necessarily, you know, takes that away from you. I think tennis can open a ton of doors. And I think I kind of, you know, we've kind of seen that in the last few years. I've seen a lot more tennis kids choosing IV ever since 2020, I feel. I feel like the IVs have been pretty hot, especially for some blue chip players, which I think, you know, if you look prior to 2020, I think the percentages took a pretty drastic jump, which is interesting to see. Yeah, you know, it's funny, you know, in some markets you see people playing for the scholarship and in some other markets you see them playing for entrance, right, into the Princeton, the Harvards. And one of the myths, like, I think if you think about basketball or football, right, the better basketball football players are obviously choosing the SEC, right, Pac -12, whatever that is. But in tennis, you know, I think that, you know, your academics and your tennis have to be, like, at the top scale to go, just because you're not like a bad tennis player if you go to Harvard, you know what I mean? Like, the kid that goes to Harvard or makes the team probably could have gone to PCU, right, or Florida or whatever, you know what I mean? And so it is interesting to see the number of people who say, yes, I've spent 30 grand on tennis for the past eight years and I'm still willing to pay for college, right, because I got into Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc. But I think it's a big myth where, you know, the United States is so basketball focused, we see Harvard basketball as, like, okay, that's everyone that didn't get chosen by the Illinois, the Wisconsin, the Michigan. And it's not the same, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's different for sure. So when you think about, like, the Ivies, right, you see a lot of kids go to East Coast and you think about, you know, COVID obviously changed something with the home school, you know, sort of situation. People who never considered that it was possible were like, okay, well, we've been living at home for a year and a half and doing online studies, it's not that bad, you know, they're more focused with their time. Did you see more people from families who you thought would not have done it try it post COVID? Yeah, definitely. I think the really popular thing that a lot of people are doing now is kind of a hybrid schedule, which I actually really like a lot. At least in California, I don't know if the schooling system is different everywhere else. I know it was different where I was from. But a lot of these kids, you know, they'll go to school from 8 to 1130 or 8 to 12. And, you know, they have their three hours where, you know, I don't know how they stagger their classes and stuff like that. But I know that pretty much every kid at every school in SoCal is at least able to do this if they so choose. And so they're able to get released around 12 or something. And, you know, they're able to be at afternoon practice and get a full block in. You know, for me, that still enables you to get the hours you need on court and to be able to maintain some of that social. And, you know, if you become, you know, really, really good, I guess, okay, by junior year, maybe you could consider, okay, maybe I should take this a little bit more seriously, maybe I should go full time homeschool. Or, you know, a lot of these kids are in a place where it's, you know, I'm comfortable with my tennis, I like where it's at, I feel like it'll give me opportunity in college. My grades are great. And, you know, maybe that person's a little more academically inclined. And, you know, they want to have a career and they feel like tennis is that great stepping stone. Which I think is a really cool thing about our sport is it just opens a tremendous amount of doors. I feel like if you figure out how to develop and be a good tennis player and how to compete well in tennis, you can you can apply that to almost everything in life. Yeah. So you talk about opening doors, right? When Alex or Lerner were sort of deciding whether to walk through door number one, which is college, or door number two, which is which is obviously turning pro. Right. How did you advise them? You know what I mean? If I say, hey, you know what? Take a couple wildcards. If you went around or two, maybe you go to college. If you win a tournament, maybe you stay out there. If an agency locks you into a deal, right? Then, you know, they normally know what good looks like and they normally have like the ear of the Nike, the Adidas, right? Then you turn pro. What was your advice in terms of if and when, right? Yeah. For those who ask. Well, they were both in different places. I'm gonna start with Lerner cuz he's younger. He actually, you know, did a semester in college. You know, Lerner finished high school, I think, when he was sixteen, sixteen and a half. And so, obviously, your eligibility clock starts, you know, six months after you finish your high school. So, for him, it was, you know, he was so young, he didn't really have much pro experience at that time. You know, he did great things in juniors. You know, he won Kalamazoo. He got his wild card into the men's that year and then, you know, he played a little bit of pro kind of and then, you know, that that January, he went in and and did a semester at USC which I think was a good experience for him socially. He had some eligibility problems which, you know, only let him play about five, six matches toward the end of the year which was kind of disappointing and then, you know, he won Kalamazoo again and so, you know, that was the second trip there and then, you know, by then, he had a little bit more exposure with, you know, agencies and brands and kind of, you know, the stuff that you'd like to see that'll actually give you the financial security to kind of, you know, chase your dream and pass up, you know, the the education, I guess, for the time being. So, you know, I felt like that was really the security was a big was a big thing for him. You know, prior to winning Kalamazoo for the second time, you know, he still had Junior Grand Slams to play. He wasn't playing men's events. So, for him being that age, you know, it was, well, you know, I'm I'm not in a massive rush so why not get a semester in and I think he had a great time. He really liked it. I mean, he he speaks pretty positively about the dual matches. He actually follows college tennis now a little bit more. You know, he will talk about some dual matches which I think is pretty cool and you know, I think it gave him some confidence getting to play for university, getting to represent, you know, seeing that university promotes you. I think there's a lot of benefits there and now, you know, he's got an alumni base. You know, people talk about all, you know, he's a USC Trojan and stuff like that. You know, you see it at all different tournaments. You know, guys are wearing a USC hat and, you know, hey, learner, da da da and you know, I think that that's pretty cool to be a part of, you know, a big family of people who are proud that, you know, they can say they played in the same place and then Alex. Alex was, you know, he was a little old for his grade and he was one that he committed and, you know, the whole time him and learner kind of, you know, talking and, you know, about going pro and da da da da. You know, obviously, it was their dream. You know, I just kept telling Alex, you know, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it until, you know, it's a real problem and so, you know, he gets to 400 in the world and, you know, it's what you do. You get to 400. You know, it's good but at the end of the day, you know, you're not, your life's not changing because you're 400 in the world. You know, so he's 400 in the world and he's, you know, saying stuff to me and I'm like, I could not care less you're going to college and then it was, you know, this was probably in January, February, you know, he starts to kind of do a little bit better and I think at that point, I recognized that he was better than a lot of the guys kind of at the challenger level. You know, just from my perspective, I was seeing kind of what it was, what it was to be 300, what it was to be 200 and I think at that point, like February, March, I fully knew that he was good enough to be there and to be winning those matches but at the same time, you know, having financial security, having set, you know, all of those factors that kind of go into whether I'm going to pass up my education and go pro. You know, it's a big decision and so I remember we were putting it off. I just said, you know, nothing till US Open. I was like, we're not, we're not talking about college till US Open. I said, you know, when we get to US Open, you finish US Open, you have that exposure, you know, we see what happens in those two weeks and then, you know, then we'll kind of make a decision but until then, like, don't even think about it. Don't talk about it. Don't care. You're going to school and I think that mentality really helped him kind of just play free. He was, you know, I'm not playing to go pro. I'm trying to do my job in school, finish my high school. I'm going to tournaments, playing great, just trying to compete and, you know, lucky for him, you know, well, I guess it's not lucky at all. That kid worked his absolute tail off but, you know, he had that success in Chicago at your club and then, you know, he made that little Newport run and I think by then, that was his third or fourth former top 10 win and, you know, he won his challenger. He final the challenger. He'd semied another one. He had kind of shown and, you know, some people have gotten attention and they started believing in him and so then, you know, that's when that big decision kind of came but I feel like for him, he really established himself, improved himself amongst pros which I think is an interesting thing because a lot of the time when you see these juniors kind of go pro sub 18, a lot of the time, it's because they had tremendous junior success which then made them, you know, they had grand slam success and stuff like that but Alex didn't have any of that. You know, Alex was kind of the late bloomer that, you know, in the last year when he was already 18 and aged out of ITF, the kid really just took it to a new level and, you know, I think he really showed that he's kind of ready for what the tour has to offer.
KCBS Radio Weekend News
Fresh update on "radar" discussed on KCBS Radio Weekend News
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Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1409: BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Will Drive $1,500,000 BTC Price
"In today's show, Bitcoin fails to recoup post -fed losses as $20 ,000 Bitcoin price returns on the radar. In breaking news, the senator who said Bitcoin can open the doors of corruption in El Salvador was indicted for corruption by the federal prosecutors who seized $100 ,000 in gold bars and $480 ,000 in hidden cash from his home. Max Keiser responded to this story. Gold is the poor man's Bitcoin. It encourages thievery, war, violence, excess stupidity like Peter Schiff and Nassim Taleb, both who turned down my offer of free Bitcoin at $1 in 2011. Also in today's show, Bitcoin blast pass is 2021 all -time high in Argentina, but hyperinflation outpaces once again. We'll also be discussing Binance and CEO CZ asked the court to dismiss their SEC suit. I'll be breaking down this latest saga as well as Bybit will suspend services in the UK following the financial regulators final warning. We'll also be discussing Nick Carter doubling down on the theory the Bitcoin was invented by the NSA. We'll also be discussing major fund managers as the BlackRock ETF will drive the price to $1 .5 million per Bitcoin as it literally unlocks $30 trillion worth of capital. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. And a quick reminder, if you gain value out of today's episode, the greatest compliment you can give, simply smash in that like button as it helps out tremendously with a YouTube algorithm. And if you're not already subscribed to the channel, you know what to do to receive daily premium crypto news alerts every single day, just like this.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "radar" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
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The Breakdown
A highlight from Is the SEC About to Go Scorched Earth?
"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 Wednesday, September 20th, and today we're asking whether the SEC is about to go scorched earth. Before we do 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 the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, lots to get through today, so let's dive right in. The SEC is not done going after crypto exchanges, according to David Hirsch, the head of the agency's crypto assets and cyber unit. Speaking at the Securities Enforcement Forum Central in Chicago on Tuesday, Hirsch said securities law violations within the industry extend far beyond existing litigation. Now, keep in mind, the crypto division of the SEC is currently bogged down with complex lawsuits against both Coinbase and Binance, two of the largest crypto exchanges. Hirsch said his unit is investigating similar activity across other firms and believes non -compliant business practices, quote, hold true well beyond any two entities. Hirsch warned, Now, the SEC is apparently also turning its gaze towards DeFi platforms in this crusade against crypto intermediaries. Hirsch said, quote, Now, a common theme of recent comments from SEC chair Gary Gensler is to mock, quote, so -called decentralized finance. This perhaps indicates that the SEC believes underlying most DeFi protocols, they will be able to find a company to sue. All that said, despite outlining an ambitious enforcement agenda, Hirsch did concede that the agency's resources are constrained. Over recent decades, the SEC has largely dealt with regulated financial institutions, with The SEC's campaign against crypto firms has largely presented existential threats rather than manageable fines, leading to a significant number of contested lawsuits. Hirsch admitted during the panel that, quote, Reflecting on that point, Hirsch recognized the scale of the task he was proposing, stating that, And similarly, there are a number of centralized platforms out there, some that are acting as unregistered exchanges. So in some ways here, Hirsch is begrudgingly admitting that the SEC is getting close to capacity, at least when it comes to ongoing litigation. They're dealing with Coinbase, Binance and Ripple, all as major cases, LBRY Library seems to be wanting to go to appeal, then there's Grayscale, which continues to be a legal battle, as well as the two recent NFT cases which settled. So the question is, can the SEC handle five lawsuits at once? Can they handle 10? Even if you think the answer is yes, at what point do you think the answer becomes no? Frankly, this is maybe why people like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong are encouraging the industry to take up arms effectively and actually fight these legal battles out in court. Now, of course, this brings up the other question of whether the SEC can bank on funding for additional resources to expand this endeavor or whether they need to have some alternative approach. This, of course, echoes the talking point from both the GOP as well as from Dems like The SEC's regulation by enforcement approach is reaching the end of its limits to the extent that it ever was successful at all, and that a much smarter pathway at this point might actually be rulemaking and guidance rather than just trying to sue the industry off the face of the planet. Look, crypto companies are fighting back. It's only a matter of time before we see some sort of coordinated defense fund, and it wouldn't be surprising to me if even this beleaguered industry can marshal a heck of a lot more resources than the SEC can on its own. Now, the other side of the coin is how much time the SEC actually has left to bring the industry to heel. Fox Business reporter Eleanor Teret tweeted yesterday, Only 13 days left for the SEC to bring enforcement actions that will count towards fiscal year 2023 enforcement numbers. The agency filed 760 total enforcement actions in FY 2022. I wonder if we'll see a surge of cases in the next two weeks? Now, certainly when it comes to the crypto industry, there is a broad sense of bring it on. Crypto trader Laxman writes, SEC warns of upcoming charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges. Few might think this will kill crypto. I feel like this will kill SEC. Crypto McKenna retweeted the headline, SEC warns more charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges are coming, and added the Latin phrase, if you want peace, prepare for war. Simplest of all, the Gordon Law Group just said, bring it on, Gary. Now, moving to the global sphere, a German regulator has stressed the risks of crypto and called for global regulations to apply consistently without exception. On Monday, Rupert Schaefer, executive director of strategy, policy and control at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, Baffin, published a blog post on the importance of united global regulation on crypto. He warned of the dangers of unregulated crypto firms using a fairly labored analogy to airspace regulation. Schaefer likened the crypto regulation to air traffic control regulations, which are relatively uniform throughout the world. In this analogy, some crypto assets and DeFi projects were UFOs. He stated then that it would be negligent to simply ignore them. Schaefer warned that FTX was a major crash and there would be many more like it to come. Now, the regulator praised the recently passed MICA regulations in Europe, but argued that further steps need to be taken. He produced a long list of global proposals from the Financial Stability Board, the International Association of Securities Commissions, the Financial Action Task Force and the Basel Committee, and this he claimed was enough to establish a global consensus, stating that quote, the international regulatory principles have been adopted and the framework has been set. Now, the common principles must be implemented consistently and consistently worldwide. There should be no white spots in the flight radar. The global rules should also apply to niche financial centers. Now, this blog post comes a little over a week since the conclusion of the G20 summit, which was pitched as an opportunity to discuss global synchronization of crypto policy. G20 leaders did manage to produce an endorsement of the latest set of policy recommendations published by the Financial Stability Board. And in her article previewing the meeting, Noelle Acheson highlighted that the adoption of FSB recommendations was quote, very likely since the recommendations don't actually say anything interesting. Noelle noted that the FSB recommendations are more around notational international cooperation and vague platitudes about enforcing risk management rather than firm policy outlines. At the same time, none of the recommendations mentioned by Schaeffer actually achieved consensus approval at the G20, calling into question how the regulator can claim that there are any common principles whatsoever. Moving over to the UK. The UK House of Lords have passed a bill which would grant authorities the power to freeze and seize crypto assets associated with crime. Currently, UK authorities cannot apply for crypto assets to be frozen unless there has been an arrest or conviction. This bill would allow them to more quickly apply for freeze orders. Hundreds of millions worth of crypto linked to crime have been seized by local authorities, but experts say this new bill could help deal with situations that aren't easily dealt with under the current legal framework. Phil Aris, Director of UK Public Sector Relations at TRM Labs said, A government fact sheet suggested even more broad use, stating that quote, The creation of a crypto asset's specific civil forfeiture power will mitigate the risk posed by those that cannot be prosecuted, but use their funds to further criminality or for terrorist purposes. Isabella Chase, Senior Policy Advisor at blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs suggested that the measure could assist with police funding, stating that quote, Corker Bining was less enthusiastic about the fundraising prospects, noting that as the UK cracks down, quite, they might find that the pool of available targets quickly dwindles as suspected criminals move their assets offshore to less enthusiastically policed jurisdictions. The bill has already been passed in the House of Commons once, so will now return for a second vote before it can be given royal assent to become law. Now, I don't know what sort of free society we're dealing with here. With the big caveat that I am not a lawyer, the discourse around this is pretty wild to me. It seems like they're talking effectively about on -chain asset forfeiture without the requirement to charge anyone with a crime. This is the digital equivalent of police being able to take what they find in your trunk if they search your car and not have to give it back to you. That's an insane policy and so is this. And I hope not just for the sake of the crypto industry, but for the sake of the UK itself, some real, real limits are put around this. Staying in the UK, however, for just a moment, on Tuesday, UK lawmakers passed the controversial online safety bill. The bill requires companies to assess the likelihood of customers encountering illegal content and of children encountering harmful content. Proponents of the bill say it will be used to protect younger internet users and make the web a safer place. The government has claimed the bill would make the UK, quote, the safest place in the world to be online. Critics, however, have warned that depending on how the bill is enforced, it could require companies to do away with encrypted messaging and essentially any notion of online privacy. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have all threatened to exit the UK if the bill was passed. Earlier this month, regulators attempted to appease encrypted messaging apps by promising to only implement text scanning if it was technically feasible, but WhatsApp head Will Cathcart appeared unconvinced, tweeting last week that, quote, the fact remains that scanning everyone's messages would destroy privacy as we know it. That was as true last year as it is today. WhatsApp will never break our encryption and remains vigilant against threats to do so. Signal President Meredith Whitaker was a little bit more hopeful that the implementation would be thoughtful. She said, quote, while it's not everything we wanted, we are more optimistic than we were when we began engaging with the UK government. It matters that the government came out publicly clearly acknowledging that there is no technology that can safely and privately scan everyone's communications. At this point, it is imperative that we press regulators to incorporate the government's safely and privately scan end to end encryption communications and push them to clearly and publicly commit to not using the unchecked and unprecedented power vested in them to undermine private communications infrastructure. Whitaker confirmed that Signal would remain available in the UK for the time being. But for content and messaging platforms, the enforcement of the bill is a high stakes issue, with the maximum penalty being up to 10 percent of global revenue. Lastly, today, an update from a story earlier in the week. We have recently talked about JPX, a crypto exchange that has come under fire from Hong Kong authorities. At the time, withdrawals were effectively halted and one influencer had been arrested for promoting the platform. Reporting on Monday morning stated that authorities had received 83 complaints related to assets worth $4 .3 million. Since then, the case has dramatically escalated. Authorities have now received over 1 ,600 complaints involving over $150 million worth of assets. Eight people have now been arrested with the expectation that more arrests are coming. Police have now stated that the arrests are in relation to conspiracy to commit fraud rather than merely promotion of an unlicensed exchange. Twenty locations have been raided across Hong Kong with police seizing cash, jewelry, computers and phones worth around $1 million. Police have frozen around $2 million held in bank accounts owned by arrested suspects, alongside about $5 .5 million in property. Authorities are currently considering the confiscation of around $8 million in criminal proceeds. On Monday, JPX blamed the Securities and Futures Commission and their counterparties within the industry for causing an illiquidity crisis. They said in a statement, When other cryptocurrency exchanges announced their entry into the Hong Kong market and began extensive promotion, JPX was subjected to continuous unfair treatment. The SFC sent letters to all of our partners requesting the cessation of cooperation with the platform. On Tuesday, however, Elizabeth Wong, director of licensing at the SFC, confirmed that the regulator had asked counterparties to step away from the unlicensed exchange. The regulator had been monitoring the platform for months and issued numerous warnings to users. She said that since those warnings were issued, JPX went from bad to worse. The events surrounding JPX could be seen either as a sign that Hong Kong authorities are serious about enforcement of new crypto regulations or an indication that the city still has a long way to go in cleaning up the industry. As we discussed before, given Hong Kong's role as a bellwether for Chinese authorities' attitudes towards crypto, this is a story that we will continue to watch. However, for now, that is going to do it for today's breakdown. I appreciate you listening, as always. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "Radar" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Hurt in auto accidents or victims of medical malpractice. Visit GBLawyers .com and feel better. Steve Drenson here, WTOP traffic. 7 News First Alert meteorologist Mark Pena. I could get used weather to like this Mark. Yeah I kind of see why maybe people live out on the West Coast. You get this kind of weather every single day. No we don't. No we don't. It rains a lot. Don't kid yourself. No I know here it does. Coast West a little different. We're getting a little taste of that for today and for the week ahead. We have high pressure that's gonna take control and we're at looking a very similar forecast tomorrow to what we saw today overnight staying mostly clear temperatures falling into the mid to upper 50s to near 60 degrees and then it's a beautiful day again. Highs back into the upper 70s to near 80 degrees. Dry conditions, sunny skies. We had a north wind around 5 to 10 and same thing for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Highs on either side of 80 degrees all through that timeframe. Now by Friday we'll begin to see some changes. That high pressure will begin to break little down a bit and what that means for us is a southerly wind returns increasing the clouds and moisture ahead of a cold French which looks to come through least at right now, late Friday, early Saturday and we can see some spotty showers, maybe a thunderstorm or two along and ahead of It's the front. not a complete washout but what we will notice is a significant drop in temperatures heading into the weekend. Right now forecast model highs showing barely getting out of the 60s on Saturday and barely out of the 50s by Sunday and thankfully we'll at least look at sunny skies. So a nice taste of fall on the way and this will be after our beautiful warm week. So just keep that on your radar as we head towards the weekend. Now outside, beautiful conditions, still seeing some 70s. I got 72 in Silver Spring, it is 69 in Alexandria, I got 62 in Gaithersburg. And it's all brought to you by
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Abortion Remarks From Gavin Newsom & Trump Creating Tons Of Controversy
"This is your source for breaking news and what to make of it all. This is the Mike Gallagher Show. Did you guys hear the U .S. Senate just eliminated its dress code because you got this guy from Pennsylvania who's got a lot of problems, I mean let's just be honest. This push from the UAW for a four day work week, do you see that as the future of labor in the U .S.? I happen to believe that as a nation we should begin a serious discussion about substantially lowering the work week. Now from the ReliefFactor .com studios, here's Mike Gallagher. We have a lot to keep up with a missing F -35 fighter jet that was found finally in North Charleston, South Carolina. You got all kinds of controversies involving President Trump in some of his interviews. You have the slaughter of a police, a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles, they caught the guy. A lot of breaking news, a lot of stories about the illegal immigration crisis in America. Lost in a lot of the headlines was the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, taking a bit of a pot shot at Ron DeSantis. It came during an interview over the weekend that he gave to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. I want you to hear this clip because I didn't catch this until last night. I was intrigued by this because all of us have to be very careful as this presidential election process plays out. As I've said over and over again, if you're a never -Trumper, what are you going to do if Trump's the nominee? If you're only in for Ron DeSantis and you hate Trump and Trump is going to be the nominee for the presidential race, what are you going to do? You're going to support Joe Biden? You're going to back a Democrat? How's that going to play out for you? I think the same standard has to apply to members of Congress, certainly members of Republican Party leadership like Kevin McCarthy. Now, I think he's pretty effective. I think he's been doing a good job and he's got a mess on his hands with this potential looming government shutdown. It's like herding cats trying to keep the various members of the caucus happy. Listen to what he said to Maria Bartiromo, though, about DeSantis and Trump. What's your take on this, that as we see more indictments of Donald Trump, he seems to be gaining in terms of popularity with the public? Will he be the nominee? I think he will be the nominee. The thing is, President Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016 or 2020. And there's a reason why they saw the policies of what he was able to do with America, putting America first, making our economy stronger. We didn't have inflation. We didn't have these battles around the world. We didn't look weak around the world. Well, it looks like Ron DeSantis is now trying to work with your colleagues who are pushing for a shutdown. Yeah, but I don't think that would work anywhere. A shutdown would only give strength to the Democrats. It would give the power to Biden. It wouldn't pay our troops. It wouldn't pay our border agents. More people would be coming across. I actually want to achieve something. And this is where President Trump is so smart that he was successful in this. You know, President Trump is beating Biden right now in the polls. Yeah, we have the poll. Let's show it. He's stronger than he has ever been in this process. And look, I served with Ron DeSantis. He's not at the same level as President Trump by any shape or form. He would not have gotten elected without President Trump's endorsement. And so I believe our best step forward, pass our appropriation bills. So we're stronger. Take the wokeism out, secure our border to make America stronger. Wow. I don't think that was on my I didn't have that on my radar. Does that surprise you that Kevin McCarthy is all in for Donald Trump? So I think to be fair and to be consistent, I have to say I have to apply the same standard to Speaker McCarthy, because if DeSantis becomes the nominee, they're going to have a bit of a bumpy relationship. Now, Ron DeSantis heard about Kevin McCarthy's position and responded as well. This is Ron DeSantis answering a question from a reporter regarding Speaker McCarthy's full -fledged endorsement of Donald Trump. Well, look, I would say I mean, I think that if you look at what's happened with D .C. Republicans, they worked very closely. You know, look, Donald Trump, he supported Kevin McCarthy very strongly for speaker. I don't think he would have won the speaker vote. Donald Trump was instrumental in him earning that speaker's gavel. And they worked hand in glove really throughout his whole presidency. They were on the same team on every major spending bill that came down the pike. And they ended up together adding seven point eight trillion dollars to our national debt. Never in a four year period has that much been added than what they did together. And so he said that we're different. We are different because in Florida we run budget surpluses. We've paid down almost 25 percent of our state's debt just since I've been governor. All the debt, all the way up for all of Florida's history, we've knocked off almost 25 percent of it. So it's a much different approach to where we're doing it right. We have the number one rated economy in the country. We've cut taxes. We've expanded school choice. And we've delivered in a way that has made the state sustainable.
Coronavirus
A highlight from opBNB Goes Live On Mainnet
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday September 13th, 2023. Developers introduce an EIP for a new BLOB base fee opcode, DAP Radar releases a zk -sync ecosystem portal, the SEC sues the Stoner Cats NFT project, and the Lazarus Group siphons over 54 million dollars from CoinX. All this and more starts right now. KCG ceremony coordinator Carl Beek introduced EIP 7516, a proposal for the addition of a new Ethereum opcode called BLOB base fee. The opcode is similar to the existing base fee opcode and can be used to retrieve the BLOB base fee value of the current block. The opcode would allow smart contracts to access the BLOB base fee, which can be used to calculate BLOB data usage costs and facilitate the implementation of BLOB gas futures for smoothing out BLOB data costs. The proposal is currently open for feedback on the Ethereum Magicians Forum. zk -sync released a new ecosystem portal managed by DAP Radar. The portal ranks DAPs by key metrics including volume, total value locked, and unique active wallets. It also sorts DAPs by categories including DeFi, NFTs, games, bridges, and DAOs. SyncSwap, MEW, and Maverick Protocol are currently the top 3 DAPs on the network by total value locked. DAP Radar is the first external ecosystem portal for zk -sync. Developers can now apply to feature their zk -sync DAPs on DAP Radar for increased visibility. zk -sync era is an EVM compatible zk rollup. The rollup is currently the third largest layer 2 network with over $400 million in total value locked. The U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against the Stoner Cats NFT project for selling unregistered securities in the form of NFTs. The project had raised $8 million from its 10K NFT collection which sold out within 35 minutes. The SEC cited the project's marketing campaign which included holder benefits and promotion from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher. The Stoner Cats NFT project settled the charges with the SEC by paying a $1 million penalty and agreeing to a cease and desist order, which included the burning of all NFTs in its possession. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce later issued a statement arguing that applying the Howey test to NFTs lacks clear boundaries and could stifle creativity among artists and creators. According to security researcher Taylor Vanno, the North Korean state -sponsored hacking group known as the Lazarus Group has siphoned over $270 million worth of assets in the last 102 days. Yesterday, the hacking group exploited $54 million from the CoinX exchange. Earlier this month, the group exploited Stake .com for $41 million. Vanno noted that while the stolen funds can be publicly traced to Lazarus Group, only a fraction gets confiscated through the freezing of assets. And lastly, OPBNB, a Layer 2 network built on the OP stack, is now live on Mainnet. An OPBNB network testnet was first released in June. Over 435 ,000 unique addresses have since interacted with OPBNB on testnet, processing over 35 million transactions. The network features a one -second block time and ultra -low gas fees. Users can now add the OPBNB Mainnet RPC to their wallet using Chain ID 204 and Bridge to the network using ZKBridge. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for watching. See you soon.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from opBNB Goes Live On Mainnet
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday September 13th, 2023. Developers introduce an EIP for a new BLOB base fee opcode, DAP Radar releases a zk -sync ecosystem portal, the SEC sues the Stoner Cats NFT project, and the Lazarus Group siphons over 54 million dollars from CoinX. All this and more starts right now. KCG ceremony coordinator Carl Beek introduced EIP 7516, a proposal for the addition of a new Ethereum opcode called BLOB base fee. The opcode is similar to the existing base fee opcode and can be used to retrieve the BLOB base fee value of the current block. The opcode would allow smart contracts to access the BLOB base fee, which can be used to calculate BLOB data usage costs and facilitate the implementation of BLOB gas futures for smoothing out BLOB data costs. The proposal is currently open for feedback on the Ethereum Magicians Forum. zk -sync released a new ecosystem portal managed by DAP Radar. The portal ranks DAPs by key metrics including volume, total value locked, and unique active wallets. It also sorts DAPs by categories including DeFi, NFTs, games, bridges, and DAOs. SyncSwap, MEW, and Maverick Protocol are currently the top 3 DAPs on the network by total value locked. DAP Radar is the first external ecosystem portal for zk -sync. Developers can now apply to feature their zk -sync DAPs on DAP Radar for increased visibility. zk -sync era is an EVM compatible zk rollup. The rollup is currently the third largest layer 2 network with over $400 million in total value locked. The U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against the Stoner Cats NFT project for selling unregistered securities in the form of NFTs. The project had raised $8 million from its 10K NFT collection which sold out within 35 minutes. The SEC cited the project's marketing campaign which included holder benefits and promotion from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher. The Stoner Cats NFT project settled the charges with the SEC by paying a $1 million penalty and agreeing to a cease and desist order, which included the burning of all NFTs in its possession. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce later issued a statement arguing that applying the Howey test to NFTs lacks clear boundaries and could stifle creativity among artists and creators. According to security researcher Taylor Vanno, the North Korean state -sponsored hacking group known as the Lazarus Group has siphoned over $270 million worth of assets in the last 102 days. Yesterday, the hacking group exploited $54 million from the CoinX exchange. Earlier this month, the group exploited Stake .com for $41 million. Vanno noted that while the stolen funds can be publicly traced to Lazarus Group, only a fraction gets confiscated through the freezing of assets. And lastly, OPBNB, a Layer 2 network built on the OP stack, is now live on Mainnet. An OPBNB network testnet was first released in June. Over 435 ,000 unique addresses have since interacted with OPBNB on testnet, processing over 35 million transactions. The network features a one -second block time and ultra -low gas fees. Users can now add the OPBNB Mainnet RPC to their wallet using Chain ID 204 and Bridge to the network using ZKBridge. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
The Dan Bongino Show
Hinds County Supervisor David Archie Blames Fraud for Election Loss
"This is a perfect example cue up for me cut tension I thought challenging an election questioning towns questioning machines signatures I thought I'd I thought that was a prison sentence I thought that was an insurrection where we would be not told that you're not allowed to question elections it's tyranny it's the 14th amendment you're fostering a rebellion against the United States hang up by the I thought we were told that yet this story seemingly flew under the radar gave me need this tomorrow on the podcast do I forgot I can't believe I didn't get to this. Here's Hines County, county Mississippi, supervisor David Archie Democrat claiming on the local news channel claiming they were the victims of election frauds. I'm just is this guy in the he's he's not Mike Mike Mike have you heard anything any updates from you no prison no no no prison time can you Jim can you do me a favor can you reach to out the FBI today for an on -the -record comment if there's going to be a wanted poster see because this guy's a Democrat alleging during a primary that another Democrat may have tinkered with the election but notice notice there's no FBI raids or anything like that why because he was a shocker this guy's exercise exercising his constitutional right to free speech reason allowed to challenge an election all he wants but Donald Trump it finds his people that indicted in Georgia for the so weird the exact exact same thing so straight Joseph yes justice here here listen to yourself check this out Hines County Democratic Party person by the name of Jackie Hanks we both we believe and we have evidence that Jackie Amos
The Breakdown
A highlight from Visa Goes Deeper on Stablecoin Settlement
"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 Wednesday, September 6th, and today we're talking about big news from Visa. 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. So yesterday's episode started with a very brief discussion of a nominally big thing for Solana that didn't push the price at all. What we're going to do today is talk about that thing, which is much bigger than just Solana, and also talk about what it says about the general state of the cycle that we're in. The specific news was that Visa has announced an expansion of their stablecoin settlement to include the Solana network. Visa will now settle some cross -border payments using USDC on Solana. The payments company began experimenting with USDC for treasury operations in 2021. The pilot began with Crypto .com's crypto -linked Visa cards issued in Australia. Visa set up a cross -border settlement channel with Crypto .com, which allowed the exchange to finalize customer purchases using USDC over Ethereum. The expansion of the USDC settlement pilot is being done in collaboration with merchant acquirers WorldPay and Nuvei. This will allow merchant customers to select USDC stablecoin settlement as an option instead of receiving fiat currencies. Now the upgrade to Visa's systems is entirely a back -end improvement, and it's designed to cut settlement times and costs. In a statement, they explained that at the moment, quote, But what they don't see is that the funds used for their purchases need to move between their bank, the issuer, and the merchant's bank, the acquirer. This is where Visa's treasury and settlement systems enable the clearing, settlement, and movement of billions in transactions a day, making sure the correct amount in the preferred currency is received from the issuer and sent to the acquirer, end quote. Now currently cross -border card payments rely on the SWIFT system, which can take several days to finalize. By switching to crypto rails, merchants can receive cleared payments much faster, which is obviously a huge boon when it comes to cash flow management. Visa head of crypto Kai Sheffield said in a Twitter thread, WorldPay and Nuvei enable card acceptance for a diverse set of merchants across the world, including a growing number of merchants interacting with the blockchain and crypto economy who may prefer to use USDC within their corporate treasuries over traditional fiat banking. Visa can now settle these payments to WorldPay and USDC, enabling WorldPay to more flexibly manage their own treasury infrastructure and route the USDC directly to their merchants with less worry about wire cutoff times and bank holidays. It's still early days, but Visa has already settled millions of dollars of USDC over the Ethereum and Solana blockchains between our clients. We are committed to continuing to innovate around how we move money and provide our clients modern options for settlement, end quote. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire noted that the paradigm shift enabled by using USDC as a settlement currency and not just a payments currency. Also on Twitter, he wrote, One of the things that I am most excited about regarding this new expanded use of USDC by Visa is the fact that USDC is being used as a core settlement layer within the Visa network, a more real -time, global alternative to traversing SWIFT and various ACH rails. More often than not, everyone focuses on the purely retail uses like the Shopify USDC plugin. When in reality, USDC is a generic digital dollar protocol that spans from retail to wholesale across commerce and finance. Our existing mental models for payment systems are dated. An internet -native digital dollar and stablecoin network protocol scales from tiny micropayments in P2P transactions to multi -hundred million dollar capital market transactions, end quote. Now, while Visa has been experimenting with faster USDC settlement on the card issuer side of the business for some time, this pilot extends that functionality over to the merchant settlement side. Now, to bulls, this move seems like a significant step forward in the adoption of crypto networks as a global public and neutral end -to -end value transfer system. Visa currently settles $11 .6 trillion in global payments annually and this settlement use case is precisely what research firm Bernstein envisioned when they made their call in August that stablecoins could become a $2 .8 trillion market over the next five years. So in terms of community reactions, obviously for the Solana bulls, this was a huge deal. Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder at Solana Labs said, I want Solana to be so cheap that it saves Visa money to use it over its own in -house infrastructure. And I want Solana to be so fast that it improves the user experience as well. Lily Lu, president of the Solana Foundation said, We've had a long -standing thesis around payments being only possible on Solana. Fifteen years into the conception of cryptocurrencies and the gradual progression of this use case from forum post to proof of concept to DeFi adoption, Solana meets users where they are today. Click a button, something happens immediately and with infinitesimal cost. This is going to be demonstrated at scale with Visa building on Solana. Now, others focused on the significance from the Visa side of things. Terry Angelos, who formerly worked on crypto at Visa said, Visa is an authorization network and not a payment network. Merchants pay for real -time authorization, security and guaranteed payment. Settlement post -transaction is when Visa moves dollars from issuers to merchants and that can happen on Wires, ACH and now crypto rails. Nick Carter writes, This is a huge deal. Writing on the wall, stables would become de facto interbank settlement solution via card networks. Even my non -crypto fintech friends are fired up about this. This is one of the most important news items of the year. Caitlin Long puts it even more catchily saying, Visa debanks the banks by going around them to settle US dollar payments outside the US banking system and outside traditional USD payment rails. Pilot programs for now, but… Dennis Porter, the CEO of the Satoshi Action Fund wrote, Bitcoin -only people will hate this but it needs to be said. Stablecoins will play an important role in the next wave of financial technology. The dollar isn't going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, stables will strengthen the dollar. Banks will adopt quickly. Now I could and maybe will at some point do an entire show about why Bitcoin and stablecoins aren't at least in the short term competitive. One offers an improvement on the system that exists. The other offers an opt -out of the system as it exists. In other words, they are far from incompatible. Finally, Mert, the CEO at Helios Labs says, The Visa news today isn't just good for Solana, it's awesome news for all of crypto. Slowly the Overton window is shifting and more financial activity is moving on chain. So this must have caused a huge price run up, right? I mean, this is big news. Nick Carter called it one of the biggest pieces of news of the year. Alas, Solana was up just 2%. Crypto trader Gumshoe wrote, In a bull market, Solana would have jumped over 100 % with all the crazy news of the past two weeks lol. The other news that he's referring to was Solana Pay integrating with Shopify two weeks ago. Trader Horse writes, The sole response is a good indication of the current market environment. Imagine what this post would lead to during any other point. Instead, price is listless. This is not a supply issue. We just don't have any buyers. The news should excite long -term investors, however. Teams that are still grinding in the bear get rewarded in the bull. Now I weighed in on this yesterday as well, tweeting, People looking for prices to move up on good news right now are totally missing the part of the cycle we're in. Until new buyers come in, it's sideways or down only. Doesn't mean good news isn't still good. It's just not going to show up in price. Now in the particular case of Solana, there is a general and specific context. The general is what we just talked about and where we are in the cycle. The specific is that Solana is dealing with the overhang of the FTX estate having $1 .1 billion worth of Solana in their coffers right now. That's something like 13 % of the total supply. Reinforcing the contrast between news and energy, even as all this was happening, Solana's daily active addresses fell to around 204 ,000 at the end of August. That's the lowest level for the metric since the block began tracking it in late 2020. Rebecca Stevens, data analyst at The Block Research, put the reasons pretty crisply saying, The Solana ecosystem was already seeing a decline in active users prior to the collapse of FTX, but the fact that the blockchain had such strong ties to the exchange and Alameda Research hurt its reputation a bit. The SEC alleging that Sol is a security also hurt the token's price and has caused it to be delisted in the U .S. on several platforms like eToro and Robinhood. Now overall, the block's monthly exchange volume measurement hit its lowest point so far during this cycle in August. Just $423 billion in volume was moved through centralized exchanges last month, falling below other recent low points in May and December. The lack of trading on exchanges was punctuated by Binance falling below $200 billion in monthly volume for the first time since November 2020. Now this lack of activity extends to Bitcoin as well. Dylan LeClair tweeted, As a percentage of circulating supply, Bitcoin moved in the last 30 days is at an all -time low of 5 .4%. Meanwhile, spot volumes are at levels not seen since 2019. Saying this market is thin currently is an understatement. Reflexivity Research co -founder Will Clemente writes, Crypto aggregated trading volume is the lowest that it's been since 2020. Google's search trends for Bitcoin and crypto at multi -year lows. Realized volatility, implied volatility, weekly Bollinger Bands, all near record lows. This is exactly what apathy looks like. Now Kaleo pointed out that although this is brutal, it's not necessarily out of sync with the cycle. He wrote, Centralized exchange volumes haven't been this low since December 2020. Daily average volume is down from $164 billion at peak to around $13 billion now, a 92 % decline. For reference, the peak in the 2017 bull market was around $28 billion, with an average of $2 .5 billion per day six months prior to the 2020 halving, a 91 % decline. So after all of the centralized exchange trauma we've seen over the past year, we're still in line with a similar trend to what we saw last cycle, despite how rough it may feel. Still, I think it's worth noting comments from Kobe given during the height of the bull market. On the Up Only show, he said quote, You need to have the same level of interest when everything is really boring. The main way you have to make it is to try to perpetuate your interest through the boring bit. The boring bit is where the opportunity is. Now of course, one of the things that people anticipate could bring some new blood in is that fabled Bitcoin spot ETF. So an update on that front as well. After winning a comprehensive victory in court last week, lawyers for Grayscale have written to the SEC to ask them to get moving. According to Grayscale, the court ruling was so comprehensive that the SEC has quote no grounds for treating the Grayscale Bitcoin trust differently to Bitcoin futures ETFs. They wrote quote, Now the letter anticipates a change in tactics from the SEC who may choose to introduce new reasons to prevent Grayscale from converting GBTC into an ETF. The letter stated that quote, Grayscale pressed home the importance of resolving this conversion in a timely manner given the number of rival products clamoring for approval. The letter noted that the SEC may have now exceeded the time allowed to refuse an application, reserving their right to argue in court that the conversion should now be deemed approved. Grayscale argued that quote, Finally, they requested to meet with the SEC as soon as possible to discuss the path forward. James Safart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg said, Now even as the ETF situation works to be resolved, there is clearly some jockeying for positioning as it relates to renewed or new institutional interest in the crypto space. As a for example, Coinbase has launched a new crypto lending service aimed at U .S. institutional clients. The service looks to fill in the gap left by the Genesis and BlockFi bankruptcies. An under -the -radar SEC filing made last week disclosed the program already has $57 million in client funds. According to a person familiar with the service, clients can lend out their crypto assets on an over collateralized basis to Coinbase. The firm can then extend those crypto assets as loans to institutional trading firms. This is essentially the same business as prime brokerage in the traditional finance space. Now, unlike the canceled Coinbase Lend program, retail customers are explicitly excluded from this service. By catering exclusively to accredited and institutional clients, Coinbase is able to offer the service under less onerous regulatory requirements. Honestly, one of the big takeaways is just what a big gap has been left by Genesis in the U .S. institutional environment. However, as you'll hear in an interview coming out later this week or maybe even later today with Hani Rashwan from 21Shares, that institutional interest may be far less gone than it might currently seem. However, that is going to do it for today's episode. I appreciate you listening as always, and until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other.
The Eric Metaxas Show
A highlight from Nathan Finochio & Chris Palmer (Encore)
"We are representing a second whistleblower from the FBI, Marcus Allen. Due to whistleblower retaliation by the FBI, I've been suspended without pay for over a year because of you, ACLJ donors. You get the best attorneys in the world. Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxas show sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit Legacy PM investments dot com. That's Legacy PM investments dot com. Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to listen to a man of grace, sophistication, integrity and whimsy? Well, so are we. But until such a man shows up, please welcome Eric Mataxas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. A big part of the reason I do this program is to introduce you, my audience, to people that I know and like. And today, unfortunately, I don't have anybody like that in the studio. I'm sitting here with Nathan Finocchio and Chris Palmer, and they're the best I could do on short notice. But seriously, guys, you're tough to sum up, and my favorite people are tough to sum up. Um, how do you how do you describe yourselves rather than have me try to do it? Nathan, why don't we start with you? Yes. So I describe myself as a genius. Yeah. Um, um, the one of the better looking people on the planet. Right. Adored by the Holy Trinity and Adonis. Yeah. Loved by God. Yes. Outwardly disheveled. But just that's just an act. Yeah, that's an act. Yeah, it's OK. Yeah. All right. So he's not going to be serious. Chris, how about if you tell me a little bit about Nathan before you tell me about yourself? Both of you. OK, you're you founded something called Theos U and Theos Seminary. Yeah. OK, so what are your backgrounds that you decided to do that? And what is Theos U and Theos or Theos Seminary? Yeah, I'll start. So I was homeschooled. My dad's a pastor. I came to New York. I was here for eight years. I was a part of a church called Hillsong, New York City. And when I was at Hillsong, I found that there are a lot of our staff and just a lot of people in our church that didn't have any theological training. And and they didn't know that adultery is wrong, for example, according to the biblical model. Yeah, exactly. For stuff like that. Stuff like that. So biblical training and theological training, you noticed this is an issue for us. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's not just an issue. It's not just an issue for Hillsong, I think is a microcosm of the Greater Evangelical Church. Correct. Where you have a lot of staff who are carrying services on weekends and they've never read. They're not they don't even know who Wayne Grudem might be. So so all that to say, I thought, hey, I could help. And so I took a number of courses that I was at Hillsong, New York City. I was teaching what was called Evening College on Monday nights. And we'd have about 300 kids who had never darkened the doors of a church and they'd come in. And I would teach for seven weeks, two hours every Monday night, essentially distilled Bible college courses. So I'd teach Romans, Hebrews, Old Testament. You understand it kills me that I was living in New York while this was happening and I didn't know this was happening. This was happening on third and 22nd. It's sickening to me. No, but I mean, it's seriously like the fact now that I know you a little bit. The fact that you were doing this and I and I and it wasn't on my radar is very upsetting to me. But we'll put that aside. So go ahead. So, yeah, I did that for four years and then I left New York before, you know, the proverbial crap hit the fan and I moved to California. And while I was there, I was just thinking, I want to put these on lines that people could, you know, that people could pay for the price of Netflix. They could access theological education that is conservative theologically. So I would describe that as Nicene Christianity, Christianity that's not departed from from Chesterton said that tradition is the democracy of the dead. And so the historical Christianity, the traditional Christianity that was passed down to us by the Apostles, the faith as delivered to the Saints. Yes. So this is what we call actual Christianity, right? As opposed to like Wokey pseudo Christianity, Christianity that I make up that, you know, Christianity that sounds good to me, right? You know, people, our churches are full of spiritualists, people who project onto God and tell God what he should be like. And I'm not interested in creating God after my own image. I want to know the God of the Bible. And so that's what we teach at the LSU is we teach like what it's got to kind of pass through the historical marker. And then obviously the next genocidal marker, Chris is like a die in the wool Pentecostal Scholar.
Latina to Latina
A highlight from Why Valarie De La Garza Calls Her Own Shots
"When Valerie de la Garza was approached about becoming the CEO of Fenton Communications, the job wasn't even on her radar. It should have been. Valerie's experience on campaigns ran everything from the census to voting combined with her years working with major consumer brands and her lived experience as a working class kid growing up in Southeast LA made her the ideal candidate to run the largest public interest communications firm in the country. Valerie thank you so much for doing this. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you. I've heard you talk about how growing up in Southgate, a working class Latino community in LA, just that early experience really shaped your commitment to social impact. What was it about that experience growing up in Southgate that had you thinking as a young person about social injustice? I don't think I really understood truly what my situation was, my standing, my socioeconomic impact in my life until I went to college, being the first one to go to college, which many of us are. And then you realize, oh wow, how behind I was from an educational standpoint and how unfair that was, that the zip code was a huge determinant, a social determinant on my life. And honestly, it made me sad. It made me angry. It made me appreciate that, wow, I'm here now. For me, that was really the crystallization of wanting to really figure out a way to be involved in social good and social impact. In the 90s, when you're doing Latino PR, it is still a pretty niche industry. It's at least treated as a niche industry. Do you have a story or a memory from that time that, if it happened today, would be absolutely ridiculous? I do. I have a couple. I would be called Maria by clients, by other peers that were in what we would consider mainstream community relations and public relations. Now, I will tell you Maria, of course, is my grandmother's name. And there are many Marias in our Latina and Latino community. The problem is you weren't one of them. Right. And this didn't happen just once. This happened to me multiple times. I believe this line is from your bios, which is, it's something on the lines of, today, Latino communications is the expectation, not the exception. And I wonder if you really believe that's so, and if it is so, why so many people are still so terrible at it. Yeah, I think that there used to be in the nineties when you saw the explosion of ethnic and public relations and communications and advertising, it was seen as, well, we need to do it in this box. We need to do it in a division. And now I think that there is a recognition when we say, quote, the mainstream communications. Well, all you have to do is look at the numbers and numbers translate to sales. Let's just be honest. And so I think that what we've seen in the industry is a reflection of what we've seen in the world. Now, there might be an expectation, but back to your point on it not being done well, because it has to still be done by people who have lived in experience, by people who come from those stories, Southgate, East LA, whether that's Chicago, you know, wherever across the country. And frankly, there can be complacency in the industry and throwing their hands up. And I see this in corporations that also say we need more people of color on boards. Oh, we can't find, quote, them. We're here. We have to be more intentional and look harder to widen the pool to get people with these lived in experiences. And in fact, we will do a great job of engaging our ethnic communities. The bulk of your experience is in nonprofit and social impact work, but you've also done brand side work and consumer side work. And I wonder what the lessons were you took from brand and consumer work that you've then been able to take and apply to your work doing social impact. When you work on the brand side, you actually have more resources and you see how things are done when there are dollars that are set aside for focus group qualitative and quantitative group testing. There is so much on the line when you're working with a company that has to move the needle on sales. I worked on clients like Nestle, I worked on Kellogg's and they were so sophisticated in using those tools and bringing that discipline into the nonprofit area where certainly those dollars are not available, which is a shame, which is wrong. They still have to move the needle, but that needle is about many times saving lives. That needle is about housing. That's about feeding people, but they do not have those resources. But certainly we can have an intentionality and we can learn how do we apply that same discipline and rigor, even if we don't have those resources or will help slow down a nonprofit and say, listen, I know you want to jump in and do X strategy right away, but let's do some research. We're going to spend a little bit more money at the outset, but it's going to be worth our while to be more on target and help us with research that's going to actually yield us results in the end. When you talk about part of your value being the fact that you did grow up in Southgate and you did grow up with a single mom and you know that lived experience, does time come to mind when someone was pitching an idea to you or like, this is how we're going to reach the Latinos or this is how we're going to reach working class people where it's sort of like required you to summon little Valerie of Southgate to be like, that's not going to work. Oh, many times, but not just now, throughout my 30 years, many, many times. And I'll tell you, they typically comes from good intention, good intention of saying, oh, we want to reach this market or community. But the wrong way of going about it from a perspective of dollars and cents and not about true engagement. And there's also, I think more than anything, and this is something we're still babbling, we're not all the same. I happen to be an 11th generation Latina. My family goes back 11 generations in Texas. So people will say, oh, what part of Mexico are you from? And I say, Texas. You know, it's amazing to me. But we're not all the same. And I think there tends to be back to the little Valerie when I would get mad, it's when it's like, oh, we're all the same. We're, quote, Hispanic. And when that diversity is not recognized, that's when you get I put my eyebrow up and say, this is not legitimate. It's not authentic and it will not work and I will not be a part of it. Does any specific pitch come to mind? I think I would get in trouble to tell me who it was just just like. Oh, well, I will tell you, I worked on a campaign where it was a Latin food brand, they produced chili and other things, and they had a long heritage and the number one consumers were Latinas. And I found the ideas of the company so stereotypical and off the mark and back to when we talked about doing research and so forth. I was like, who did you lean in? Because this is a different market for you. This is going to come off badly. You know, man with a big mustache comes out in a white suit, the big hat, and it was awful. And so you have some clients who are willing to listen and some clients who are not. At that time, there was a middle ground that was reached. But it's hard when you're the only one. See, this is again why it's important to have people at the table, because then you're the one. Oh, it's just you and then you're not so valid. But when you're like, well, actually, no, like, let me explain to you why that it can be potentially offensive. You're walking into a situation where you either offends or it falls flat and then you don't want to invest in the market anymore. But if you actually engage authentically, then guess what? You will in connect with the consumer, then you will make more money. That's what you want to do. You won't sell more. But in that case, I was shocked at the imagery. I felt like we were in the 1950s. And really, you were in the early aughts. Valerie, here's my big question. What were you doing? How were you positioning yourself so that you were someone that was being thought of as a person with CEO potential? Because you can say it's the work, but like we're Latinas, we do the work, right? Like that part we've got. Beyond that, what were the strategic relationships? What was the personal branding? What was the positioning that allowed you to step in when that opportunity presented itself? I think for me in this moment, it was not a job that I actually had on the table for myself. And that's very telling, by the way, because we don't see ourselves in that position. We don't see, you know, it's less than seven percent in my industry. It's seven percent for people of color. So it's like I think it's four percent for women, people of color. And who knows what it is for Latinas? You know, when I look back to sort of what brought me to that moment, I think that was the diversity of the experiences that I just mentioned. I think that it was an authenticity to the work that I just have been talking about. For us at Fenton, we really need to mirror the experiences of the communities that our clients serve. And so I can talk about that in a way that not everyone can talk about that. That little girl that you talked about growing up in Southgate and that family is the same person that many of our clients are trying to impact today. And so I think that that was extremely attractive. And I think that, you know, it's not just doing the work, it's doing good work and it's being empathetic and kind. To me, those are things, especially as women, we've been told all our lives are soft, are told all our lives, we need to be strong and hard. And can you still be a badass. Being a badass is about saying, what is your experience? How can I make that better? How can I relate to you? And I think that for me, I see no other way. And I think that that's a departure in what we're seeing in companies from male to female. It just so happens that I also bring the experience of growing up low income, of growing up with a single mom and seeing that not as a deficit, but seeing it as an asset. And something that is a new insight that perhaps others may not be able to really understand. You layer on to that lived experience, the work experience, and you have what I would describe as a real web of skills, right? So strategy, writing, team building, marketing, media relations, community outreach, public affairs, I would argue the highest value players are people like you who have an intricate set of skills. I think one of the challenges then is how you communicate and sell those skills in an interview, right? How you make it clear how those skills work together to create a cohesive vision of what a leader is. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. I think that the value that you can bring to the table as a Swiss Army knife versus just saying, OK, I can do just one thing, shows agility. And I think in the end that if the combination of producing excellent work, being agile and showing that you can shift, because let's be honest, any role and talking about communications in your field too, you've got to be a Swiss Army knife. And I think that coming from backgrounds where you've had to be agile anyway, you know, and dealing with difficult circumstances that can roll up into who you are professionally. You should be able to move back and forth because that's going to make you more marketable. And for me, I've always been interested in what haven't I done yet? It's a confluence of those skills and what you learn and all those just different ways that you bring and make you attractive for someone to call you up one day, which is what happened to me and said, listen, I know you're running half of our agency. Would you be interested in this? I'd love you to do this. And it was really more about me saying, OK, let me bring out the Swiss Army knife. You know, I've not done that, but I have all these skills. Now I can bring them together. I don't want to gloss over this point, which is this was not on your radar. Someone else saw it in you. When you get the call saying, would you think about this? Did you do the thing I hope you did not do? You said, yes, me hands up. Or did you play a little coy and say, I'm going to need a minute to think about it? Yeah, I actually did not say yes. I said, I will do this in the interim. And I had a plan and my plan was and we should all talk about mentors. I had so many women and men, but women in particular about, you know, this is not something I've done. And just because it's given to me and so many times I tell people and I think as women and particularly as people of color, we think this is my shot. And if I don't say yes, I'm going to lose my shot. And I tell people this and I recently said this to someone the other day. You have to decide what your shot is just because someone calls you. You may not be set up for success. You have to decide if that is your shot. And by the way, you deserve getting the phone call, but maybe it's not for you. Maybe it won't make you happy. Maybe it won't give you the opportunity to thrive in the way that you want to thrive. So for me, I said I did some consulting with the friends. One friend who had been a CEO twice, a woman of color, and she said, listen, I think it's a great opportunity, but it's a lot of responsibility. But more importantly, can you have the ability to do the things that you will want to do? What's your discretion? What does that really look like in terms of responsibility and how does that fit into your life of what you want to do with the vision for the firm? And so she said, do 100 days if you can sort of try it before you buy it on both ends. If you have that opportunity, do take that because then you can see what it really is like, your owner and you, and you will be in a situation where you'll say this is good or I need to make these adjustments or peace out. And our owner, James Marcus, agreed to it. And it was the best decision I ever made. And I couldn't be more honored and humbled to be in the role now two years later. Valerie, what did I miss? The only thing I want to say is that I tend to see in many of my staff members, especially women of color, we suffer from imposter syndrome. And I just want to say to ignore if you can or talk back to that voice when it tells you you cannot. There's a difference between saying, you know what, this is what I want to do. It's not that I cannot do it. I make those choices and to not let that creep into your psyche and take over because we need to be honest with ourselves and know that you have people around you who want you to succeed. Valerie, thank you so much for doing this. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleco Antigua and me, Alicia Menendez. Paulina Velasco is our producer. Cochin to Shiro is our lead producer. Trent Lightburn mixed this episode. We love hearing from you. Email us at hola at Latina to Latina dot com, slide into our DMS on Instagram or tweet us at Latina to Latina. Check out our merchandise at Latina to Latina dot com slash shop. And remember to subscribe or follow us on radio, public Apple podcast, Google podcast, good pods wherever you're listening right now. Every time you share the podcast, every time you leave a review, you help us to grow as a community.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Matthew: Emmanuel (Which Means God With Us)
"You know, there is a world of difference between saying to someone that I am for you and telling them that I am with you. These two things do not mean the same thing. There's a world of difference between telling someone, I'm for you, I'm in your corner, I'm rooting you on, you've got this. There's a world of difference between telling someone that and telling them, I'm with you. In World War I, there was a lieutenant. His troops were getting ready to go over the edge. They were ready to take on the enemy. They were ready to cross the trenches. And this lieutenant, he's anxious. He's nervous about what might happen, and he sees a commander coming down through the trenches. The commander looks at this man, and he can see the anxiety. He can see the nerves there, and so he comes alongside him, puts his arm on him, and he points out. He points out to where they're going. He points out to no man's land. And he tells them, when we go out there, I'm going to be with you. We're going to do this together. And that gave the younger man a sense of confidence. It wasn't the old grizzled veteran just saying, you got this, from a distance, and go do it. Rather, he was saying, I'm going to be with you as you do it. I'm with you in the trenches, and I'm going to be with you in the battle yet to come. As we said, it's one thing to tell someone I'm for you. That's easy. You can do that to anyone. It's another thing to say, I'm going to invest myself in the outcome of what you're going through. I'm going to enter into the crucible of your pain with you, at your side. There's a comfort when a commander or a general does it, but how much more so when a god does that. When god not only gives us a word and says, hey, you got this. I'm for you. I'm in your corner. But rather when he says, I am with you as you face this. There's something encouraging about that. In today's text, it's exactly what we see. In today's reading, the birth of this child, the one who had come from a throne down to a manger. In this text, we see that this one was to be named Immanuel. That this one was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And that his name literally means God with us. God with us. Not just God for us, but God with us. Verse 23 of our text will say, behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son. They shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. This is one of the primary attributes, one of the primary things that makes our god cool, that makes our god awesome. One of the primary things is because he didn't just create the cosmos, spin it like a top, and then go off and watch us from a distance to see how things would turn out. Rather, from the get -go, from Jump Street, from the garden, that which he created, he dwells with. He creates Adam, he creates Eve, and then he walks and talks with them in the cool of the afternoon. The pagan gods didn't do this sort of thing. They didn't pay attention necessarily to everything that was going on. The god of the deists, the people who think that God is just this aloof god out in the cosmos somewhere that has nothing to do with us, who wants that kind of god? Thank God that's not the god we have. Rather, we have a god who is with us in the midst of everything we're going through. This was true in the garden. It was true at Sinai. It was true in the tabernacle. It was true in the temple. That's true for even us as New Testament believers because where does God reside now? God is with us. Do you know how the book of Matthew closes? Do you know what the very last verse is? Here we see as Jesus is introduced, his name means, I'm with you, God with us, the very last verse in the book of Matthew, the very last block of text in the book of Matthew says the same thing. In the Great Commission, we see this. Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to serve all the things I've commanded you, and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age. You see that? There's a bookend. The moment Jesus is introduced in chapter 1, the message is that God has come down from the throne to be with his people. And then prior to his ultimate ascension, he says the same thing because I'm going to leave my helper. Oh, and by the way, I am with you even to the end of the age. That's a God we can love. That's a God we can worship. A God who is not just for us but a God who is with us. All right, if you would, let's look at verses 18 and 19. We're going to talk about the God who is with us as we see of his birth. In verses 18 and 19, we're going to see what was going on with Mary Joseph, and then we're going to work our way through the text as time will allow. Okay, verses 18 and 19. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. All right, at the start of this passage, we see something just very ordinary, something as natural as natural can be. There's a woman, an individual who's pregnant, a pregnancy that will lead to childbirth. Very natural, happens all the time. However, in these verses, we see that there's something unnatural or at least unusual that's going to take place. Verse 18 adds an unordinary qualifier. It says that there's going to be a pregnancy, normal, but in this case it will occur without physical union. Now I'm not a physician, but I have studied anatomy and the like, and I know that's just not the way that this works. Well, verse 18, we're seeing the seeds for something that we call the virgin birth, and this is one of the most important things to understand with regards to Christ's birth, with regards to the incarnation, because this is not an average everyday event. Rather, this is a miracle, and it's not just a miracle, but it's a fulfillment of prophecy, because Isaiah said this is the way it was going to go down. Behold, there be a virgin who would give birth to a child. Now verse 18 clarifies it. It's not Joseph's child, and for these verses, we know this much. They're betrothed, but there's been no physical union then. Now if you've seen Fiddler on the Roof, you remember the matchmaker? Remember the matchmaker? Well, they had similar things throughout Jewish history. They would have a season in which people were brought together. This was tradition. They were brought together by matchmakers and parents and others. They were put into a union, and yet there was a year. I know you want to sing it. There was a year of time after they were brought together in which they were sort of betrothed. We might consider it engaged. It's not really a point -for -point analogy, but they were betrothed. They spent a year in this estate prior to physical union. That's what's going on here. It's actually much stronger than an engagement. This is a strong relationship that they have, and yet it has not been consummated physically at this point. And so, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Mary is with child. Uh -oh. Now, we have lost touch with the word scandal. We really have. I mean, dear heavens, everything is a scandal. It doesn't matter what news. Whatever you pick up, there's a scandal on every page from every direction. It seems like every aspect of celebrity or politics or athletics or what have you, scandal, scandal, scandal. We've lost touch with it. In fairness, it didn't always used to be this way. If you're watching a TV show, if Barney Fife stole part of Andy Griffith's sandwich, they can make a whole scandalous episode out of that. There was things in the past that seemed scandalous at the time that now it's absolutely nothing. We've lost touch with scandal to the point we look at this text, and we don't understand what Joseph's going through. And his culture and his time, what he and Mary were just experiencing. She's pregnant, and there's no father. There's been no physical union. He is betrothed to someone who's pregnant, doesn't know what's going on. This was a scandal of scandals. And in his day, based on an understanding of Deuteronomy, this could even have led to her death. This was not a small thing. This is a huge, huge event that's taking place. And so, in verses 18 and 19, we see Joseph in the middle of a conundrum. He's betrothed to this individual who has this situation going on. He doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know exactly what's going on, but he has concern. Now, he cares for Mary enough that he doesn't want to see this become the public spectacle that it otherwise very well could be. And so he attempts to find some way to accommodate her well -being, but apart from being able to marry her, because he's a just man, and there's obviously been in his mind an infidelity that's taken place that would disqualify that union. Now, before he could act on that impulse, an angel intervenes. Let's look at verses 20 and 21 to see what happens in this intervention. Verse 20, but while he thought about these things, while Joseph thought about all this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she'll bring forth a son, you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All right. As we said in verses 18 and 19, Joseph and Mary, Mary is now pregnant. Joseph is trying to figure out what to do. And in verse 20, we see that while he's contemplating, which I'm sure this took some time for him to work this through, but while he's thinking about these things, he goes to sleep. He's worried, he's anxious, he falls asleep, and in the midst of his sleep, an angel of the Lord comes to him in a vision, in a dream. And this happens at other intervals as scripture as well. And when the angel comes to Joseph, it's a simple message. It says, Joseph, what you think has happened is not accurate. But let me tell you, you're worried you should take Mary as your wife. You shouldn't be. Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't know what kind of theologian Joseph was at this point. We believe him to be older than Mary, but we don't know what kind of theologian he was. But whatever his theology was, he probably didn't fully understand that last statement. That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Joseph didn't have John Calvin around to explain all the Trinitarian implications of this. And I imagine Joseph had more questions than answers, even when he hears this news. And yet he knew this much, even if he didn't have all the Trinity figured out at this time, even if he doesn't know what it means for the Spirit to overshadow her, even if he's still going, what does that mean? He at least knew this much, that Mary's pregnancy was not a function of her sin. He knew that there was not some other father in some tent down the street. He knew that the child that she was pregnant with was from God. And some way that he probably couldn't fully articulate, but he knew it was from God. And then God, through the angel, tells Joseph what to name him. Now naming rites in Jewish culture or any culture come from seats of authority. If you think about it in the garden, in the garden, Adam and Eve, you know, they're given the garden and all the animals are frolicking about as animals do. And Adam and Eve had a job, they actually had a couple of jobs. One was to take dominion over that which God had given them, and another thing was to do what for the animals? To name them, right? The greater names, the lesser, right? That's why parents named children are not children naming parents. Kind of glad it doesn't work that way. In this case, we see that God himself, through the angel, takes ownership over the name of his own son. It's not up to Joseph to name. He says his name will be Jesus. His name will be Jesus. We'll see that a little bit more in the verses yet to come. Whatever the case here is, the idea is that as this child is born of the Holy Spirit, this child comes with a purpose. His name will be Jesus because Jesus means what? It means the Lord is salvation. His person is yoked to his work. The angel identifies his person and his origins from God, the Holy Spirit, but he also identifies here's what he's come to do, and we're going to see that a little bit more in the verses yet to come. What we're also going to notice here, just a minute, is that when the angel talks about who will come to save his people from their sins, remember last week we talked about this. The people didn't necessarily have a problem with their sins. You know what the great irony is? You give someone a cure for a disease they don't think they have. If you come running up to someone on the streets of Gulfport with a vial of some cure, some medicine, or what have you, for a disease they don't understand they got, they'll just say, you crossed the other side of the street. They won't care because they don't recognize what you're holding is the cure for a problem that they have. The same is true with sin. The culture around us doesn't really think they have a problem with sin, and if they do think sin is a problem, they do this thing that's convenient. They redefine sin to be something that is external to them, a problem other people have. Whatever the case, when people had no understanding that they need to be saved from sin, if anything that they need to be saved from, it was going to be from Rome, which is what we talked about last week. Their fear, their concern, Joseph's concern, Mary's concern, the people down the street's concern was not so much that, oh, my sin is going to get me. And yet, that was the spiritual guillotine that was over their necks and ours apart from this child that was born. Every man, woman, and child has stood condemned under sin. You read the Book of Romans, the first five, six chapters, as Paul is condemning the human race and saying, well, this is our problem. Then, of course, he introduces the solution. Well, the angel introduced the solution too and says, this one has come not just to make your life better, not just to pour a little Jesus seasoning on things to give you your best life now. This one came to this end, to this object, to save you from your sins, to save you from a problem that you might not even understand that you have and that our culture certainly doesn't understand it has. That's why he came, and here's the thing. That's what the whole Old Testament said he would do. The Old Testament said when he shows up, when the Messiah we've been waiting from since Genesis 3 .15, when the seed shows up, he will come to save people from their sins, not what they were looking for in the first century, not what they were looking for in the 21st century. And yet the Old Testament prophecy said that's the guy to look out for, one who is not what you expect, one who will come to save you from your sins, one who is not going to come down on a red carpet from God, but will be born in a place like a manger. Isaiah 53, one of the most famous chapters that speaks to these issues, says this. This one would be wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace would be upon him. By his stripes we'll be healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to our own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. The angel got it, and he says in the manger, Joseph, and in the womb of Mary right now is the one that has come to do just that. And the cruel irony is the people won't be looking for that. As he gets older, they'll reject him. They'll reject what he came to do, and yet this is the one. This is the child. All right, let's take a look now at verses 22 through 25 and just kind of build on this case. Okay, verse 22. So all this was done, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son. They shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated God with us. Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took to him his wife, and did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. All right, as we just said a moment ago, Christ's person is yoked to his work. The great problem in our age is that our culture doesn't do the same thing. At Christmastime in December, you just watch, people don't have a real problem with the person of Jesus so much. They like cute Jesus, even divine Jesus. That's not really the problem. The problem is his work. He came to convict us of our sins, to turn our hearts to God, to cause us to repent, and to rescue us from sins that most of us don't acknowledge that we have. But in this text, the angel spells it all out. He says this is the reason he's coming. This is the reason he's coming, in order to save them from their sins. And as he saves them from their sins, he will be the fulfillment of prophecies that said he would do just that, which is why even the angel quotes the Old Testament here. End of verse 23. Behold, the virgin shall be with child, shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated God with us. There's a continuity you're supposed to see with that which is written down recorded in the Old Testament and that which comes on the scene here in Matthew chapter 1. God wants us to see that, and Matthew was desperate that his contemporaries saw it. Remember, their problem when they killed Jesus was they didn't recognize him for who he was. I mean, they had other issues too, but that was chief among them. They just didn't know what they were doing. Isn't that what Jesus said? Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Same idea. They had a Messiah on their radar that they wanted, and it wasn't this one, this guy. So at Matthew, when he's writing chapter 1, when he's writing to the Jews, he started with the genealogies we talked about last week, and he said, all right, this Jesus is going to be a son of Abraham, which makes him a Jew, and it's going to be a son of David, which makes him a king, or in the line of kings. His objective was to tell the Jewish audience who this Jesus was. Well, here, as chapter 1 continues, he gives the biography even more so, and he says that this one, this Jesus, which means God is salvation, is also named Immanuel, which is an Old Testament prophecy that means God with us. Matthew's making the case, even here in chapter 1, clearly in chapter 1, to a Jewish audience, that this is the Jewish Messiah. Now, would that be compelling? Well, to some, yes. To others, not so much. Now, the past 15 minutes or so, we've quoted Isaiah a few times. I think I referenced Malachi as well, but there in verses 22 through 25, we see the reference again to Isaiah more acutely, more specifically, and this is a reference that to the Jewish audience should have resonated with him, but again, as we just said a moment ago, the irony is that it didn't. The reason that's ironic is this. Matthew knew that many of his fellow Jews had rejected Jesus while simultaneously longing for a Messiah, and his objective here in chapter 1 is to say, hey, guys, they're the one and the saint. The one you rejected is the one you were looking for, and that's what Peter does in Acts 2. He tells the Pharisees, you know the one you killed, the one you nailed to a tree, the one you hung on the cross? That was him, and when they finally get it in the book of Acts, when they finally get that, what happens to them? Scripture says they're just broken to the heart because then they understand what they did. They understand that the light of life had come to them. They didn't recognize it, and then they killed them. As we look to wrap up, we're going to build on all these things as we head towards baptism, as we go towards the temptation, and the things that are going to follow in the book of Matthew, but as we wrap up, I want to return briefly to the word Emmanuel, which we've already established means God with us. Now, earlier I used the term, the term deus. Let me explain briefly. I know many of us know it, but let me explain briefly for those who don't. Every culture, when it comes to religion, there's two camps that they fall in. One, assuming that they believe in God at all, one is the camp of the deist. That camp believes God exists, but we can't know him. He formed the world around us, but then he went off and he does his thing and we do ours. That's deism. As Christians, we're not deists. The alternate is what we call theism. Theism posits that God exists, but you can know him, and what's more, he wants you to know him. You and I are theists, and if you drill into that term even more, we're monotheists. We believe in one God. We're not polytheists that believe in a lot of them. We believe that there is a God. You can have a relationship with him. There is a God and there is just one. Now, that's highly desirable because the alternative is you have a God you can't know that doesn't care about you, and that's what a lot of agnostics in our day do. They go, I think there might be a God somewhere, but they really don't think you can have a relationship with him. Who wants that? Who desires that? Well, the picture in Matthew 1 and throughout the book of Matthew, the picture that's painted here is completely different. It's not about a God who formed the cosmos and went away. Rather, it's a God who is ever -present with creation and undergoes the life experiences, the human experiences that we do up to and including birth. You have a God that can relate to you. You know, one of the greatest hardships or plagues on our age is the plague of loneliness. It's this idea that no one can relate to what I'm going through. The life circumstances have conspired in such a way that I'm going through something that no one can really understand, no one can really relate to, and then there's an isolation that comes with that, even a withdrawal. Maybe some people withdraw from us, and then we're left in this estate. Some of us, maybe many of us, are left in a state of loneliness, maybe for a season, maybe for a lifetime, and it's the hardest thing if you've experienced it. If that's you or someone you know, this message of God with us, and this word of manual should hold a special meaning. Others leave might us, others might forsake us, others might let us down, and yet the God who walked with Adam and Eve, when there was just two of them in the cool of the afternoon, walks with us still. Even we're just one of us. God is with us no matter what we're going through. He's not just munching popcorn, watching what you're going through this week. Some of us have a picture of God that He's up there in the clouds somewhere with a long beard, a long robe, and He's just kind of doing this to see what we do, and He's ready to punish us and the like, and He's there and we're here, and there's this distance. That's not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is a God who is intimate and close and wants to be close to you and wants your hand to fit in His. He doesn't call you a peon in the kingdom of heaven. He calls you a son or daughter, and that has meaning. What father or mother among us has not held the hand of our child and felt that proximity, felt that closeness, felt that bond, felt that unity that comes with holding your own? Well, that's what God wants with you. And even now, even if we've been fleeing from Him, His arms are open to this. He came as a babe and a manger, the most defenseless thing that you can possibly come. He came from a state of great glory into a state of great hardship, great difficulty. It would ultimately lead to His death, and yet He did it because He loves His people. He's not indifferent to us. He's not indifferent to us. The other problem that we can sometimes verge into is we can think that He's indifferent to me, but He's cool with other Christians, but I've done something that is so egregious or He knows my past or He knows the things I did yesterday because of that there's this gap. If there's any gap in your walk with God, it's not because He's drifted away from you. It's because you're pushing Him away. The God of this book does not withdraw from children, from sons and daughters, but He's like the parable of the prodigal son. His arms are open wide. Matthew 1, God with us. Matthew 28, God with us. Behold, I am with you even to the end of the age. Whatever you face this week, this book is not an abstract thing that just applies to other religious people or you on occasion. It applies to you today. God's with you as you face whatever you're facing, whatever hardship you're walking down, whatever valley you're traversing, God is with you, and that's a great encouragement of Scripture, and no other faith can present it except this alone. God is with us. We see it in Matthew 1. We're going to see it in Matthew 2 and the balance of the book. Let's pray. Join Dr. Toby Holt and Dr. Dominic Aquila for a tour of Israel in February of 2024. For more information, visit fpcgulfport .org.
people AND tech
McKinsey's Report on Measuring Developer Productivity Sparks Outrage
"This has popped on our radar last week when it came out. Everyone, almost everyone in the tech community has seen it at the same time. It's all we've all been kind of flabbergasted looking at this report that looked quite 1992 from and for a while we kind of dismissed it and we thought surely it was going to be serious. But then we had quite quickly some voices in technology look at the meat of it and become immediately appalled by quite the same things. And I think most of us independently came to the same reaction separately over the last few days, which is that the existence of this piece of writing from McKinsey as an indication that it's okay to be measuring developers under this terminology and with the assumptions they have in place regarding what is coding versus non -coding time is an absolute abomination. And one that I would say is can be criminal because quite frankly in the day and age where mental health is so precarious and we have such crisis at work, throwing things out there that are potentially problematic is scary. We should all be wary, right? Yeah, yeah, especially when you consider who's McKinsey's audience are. Right, that's exactly it. Exactly, right. But you have to admit from a CEO point of view, sales, between say marketing and engineering. I don't want to hear it. If you are making any kind of technology as a CEO and you are not a tech person, you should be ashamed of yourself. I don't think it's even contentious. If you are a technology company and you are a non -technology minded CEO, which is my point of contention with a piece of writing we're going to bring in in a second. Which company is not making some form of software somewhere in the corner? No, no, very different from it being your core to do. If you consider yourself a technology company, you must have a technology visionary at your helmet. At the very minimum, someone who is a technologist at heart and gets bloody architecture, latest trends, what learning means, how to move people and how to be an inspiration leader at the same time. You cannot be. We have to start eliminating these allowances. It cannot be okay
The Garden Question
A highlight from 125 - Cultivating History: Exploring George Washington's Mount Vernon Garden - Dean Norton
"The Garden Question is a podcast for people that love designing, building, and growing smarter gardens that work. Listen in as we talk with successful garden designers, builders, and growers, discovering their stories along with how they think, work, and grow. This is your next step in creating a beautiful, year -round, environmentally connected, low -maintenance, and healthy, thriving outdoor space. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or an expert, there will always be something inspiring when you listen to The Garden Question podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Craig McManus. Dean Norton fell in love with the Mount Vernon Estate Gardens 53 years ago and never left. After receiving a degree in horticulture from Clemson University, he began his career as the estate's boxwood gardener. The historical gardens of the first president of the United States, George Washington, became his responsibility in 1980. His promotion to horticulturalists allowed him to apply the latest plant science and horticultural management techniques for historical gardens. Dean has devoted considerable time to researching 18th century gardens and gardening practices. He has received awards for conservation from the DAR and the Garden Club of America, as well as the Garden Club of America's Elizabeth Craig Weaver Proctor National Medal. He is an honorary member of the Garden Club of Virginia and the Garden Club of Providence. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Washington College, serves on several historic property boards, and lectures nationally and internationally. This is Episode 125, Cultivating History, Exploring George Washington's Mount Vernon Garden, with Dean Norton, an encore presentation and remix of Episode 64. Dean, why did General George Washington, the first president of the United States, garden? Well, he really gardened for necessity. The earliest gardens were called gardens of necessity for health and survival. Of course, the most important plant to be planted within a garden were vegetables, something that you were going to have at the dinner table to eat. Vegetables were huge to him. Even during the Revolutionary War, he wanted to make sure that his troops were getting as many vegetables as they could whenever possible. I would not actually call him a gardener per se, but for a year and a half, he became a designer. He totally redid his country seat from a very simplistic design to one following naturalistic design principles. Then that landscape were four very fine gardens that he oversaw. What story does the Mount Vernon Garden tell? Tell us the story of a man that wanted his gardening world to be complete, I would say. He had a very small botanic garden, which he fondly called his little garden. When he was here on site, he was typically doing that work himself on his knees, planting seed and seedling saplings. He kept such good records in that little tiny garden that we were able to recreate that quite nicely. His earliest gardens were a fruit and nut garden and a kitchen garden, but when he changed his design, the kitchen garden remained as it is. The fruit and nut garden became a pleasure garden with vegetables in there as well, which is kind of an interesting combination. He had a vineyard for a while, but the grapes failed, and that became a fruit garden and nursery. The nursery was for plants that he could grow to plant on other areas of the estate and also to grow things just for collection of seed. What is today's mission for the garden? Today's mission for the garden is interpretation. We are trying to share with our visitors what life was like in the 18th century, why these gardens were important. Certainly after 1785, the gardens took on a new role, which was for people to come when he had created here at Mount Vernon. The story of gardeners themselves, the gardeners that Washington hired through the Articles of Indenture, also the enslaved gardeners that worked with the professional gardener to cultivate till to harvest. It's a great story. It's one that we thoroughly enjoy telling. Gardening really hasn't changed much from the 18th century, so the more we're out there digging in the earth, we think of those gardeners from the past. Today's visitors, how do they respond? I'll tell you what, when they come through the gates and they get to the Bowling Green Gate and see the house for the first time, that's exactly what they were expecting to see, this beautiful house that Washington lived in. But then the further they go into the landscape, they're really totally blown away by the amount of landscape and gardens that Washington had. They weren't expecting that at all. I think the gardens are well received, and I think that the stories we tell throughout the estate in so many different areas are certainly appreciated by our visitors. The garden's been there for about two and a half centuries. You've told us that there's four gardens that make up the Mount Vernon Garden. Could we walk through each one of those and you tell us about them? Sure. The panic garden is a simple garden, very small. It was intended to plant things that Washington was not familiar with, although sometimes other things that he knew quite well ended up in there as well. He received 500 Chinese seed, which he planted in one of the beds. None of them came up. So actually, we could show one of the beds with nothing but bare dirt and we would be exactly correct. That was his playground, and he truly loved getting plants he wasn't familiar with and planting them in there, and he did most of the work in there himself. There was an area that he started a vineyard, hoping to get some grapes for making wine, but that failed. That four -acre area became a fruit garden and nursery. Washington kept such good records that the fruit trees are planted exactly as he describes in that particular enclosure. Part of it is a nursery as well, where he grew trees and shrubs, also some other grasses and things just for the collection of seed. The kitchen garden was the first garden laid out in 1760, and that has been cultivated as a kitchen garden since 1760. It's never changed in its purpose, which is the only garden like that on the estate. Both the kitchen garden and fruit nut garden were an acre in size, so that's a significant garden. The nut garden changed from a garden of necessity to a pleasure garden, and that was meant to be the aha moment. When people were strolling around the Bowling Green, they could look through that gate, they saw a beautiful conservatory. The idea was to walk in there and just enjoy the beauty of the flowers, and those flowers were there for their enjoyment and not for their use. I think his gardening world was quite complete. You said the conservatory, would that be the greenhouse? That's correct. It had a greenhouse that he copied from a lovely property called Mount Clare, just to the north of Baltimore. The owner was Margaret Carroll. He asked for permission for some information, and she was thrilled and gave him all that he needed, even his first plants for his collection, to get his greenhouse started. I started studying that greenhouse in pictures. When I think greenhouse, I think a glass top or a plastic top or something like that, and this was constructed quite different. Could you tell us about how it was constructed and it was heated? The greenhouses in the 18th century typically just had glass panes on the south side, this was southern exposure. Also typically they were triple home windows, so you could open top and bottom to allow for good air circulation. This was quite modern, very good. It had a vaulted ceiling, so hot air didn't get trapped up at the corners. It had a wood door on the west side of the structure to keep afternoon sun from coming in. It was too hot. A glass door on the east side to allow morning sun in. It had shutters that closed very tight, so in the wintertime when you got whatever heat you could get from the solar energy, you could close those shutters and retain the heat overnight. It was heated by a stove room on the opposite side of the structure. The fire pit was quite low, and that hot air and smoke would go underneath the slate floor in the greenhouse and then rise up along the back wall and out the chimney. It was very efficient. It housed the semi -tropical plants and citrus trees in the winter. Not for them to continue to fruit, so he had lemons and limes and all that. Just to keep them alive in the wintertime. In all these gardens, he's combining beauty with necessity. How did he accomplish that? The one garden that really does that beautifully is the upper garden, or pleasure garden. He wanted a pleasure garden. He wanted the aha moment when someone walked into there. It's a 10 -foot -wide path, edged in boxwood with this greenhouse at the end. He was concerned, though, in that he didn't want to lose a lot of space to the growth of vegetables, which were still the most important plant that he grew on the property. 18th century horticulture said, look, George, you can do both. Plant your vegetables and then surround them with a border of flowers. The border could be three feet, five feet, whatever you so decide. It's the border that's actually the pleasure garden. So you're really not losing that much space to growing vegetables. How did Washington change his gardens to enhance Mount Vernon's natural beauty? He adopted the naturalistic style. There are four key elements of that. The curve line is nature's gift, management of surprises, random planting, and hidden barriers. If you can do those four things, you're well on your way to a wonderful naturalistic design. The management of surprises, the curve line helps you with that. Around each bend, you can do something different. The book that he's learning all these techniques from was written by a gentleman named Batty Langley. He wrote the book in 1728 called New Principles of Gardening. Washington purchased it in 1759. Langley goes in, he says, once you've seen one quarter of your garden, you should not have seen it all. There's nothing more shocking and stiff than a regular garden. He said every garden must have good shade. If you have to walk more than 20 paces in full sun, your walk is not worth it. Washington really took all these thoughts and comments to heart and made sure he put trees on either side of his serpentine avenues. Around each bend, he added shrubberies in wilderness areas and groves. It really was a complete landscape, and it was all just trying to stay within the qualifications or the requirements of a naturalistic garden. There are many historical events that took place away from Mount Vernon. For long periods of time, Washington was gone. How did he stay in touch with his garden and its growing? Much to his demise, much to our benefit, Washington, during the 45 years he lived here at Mount Vernon, he was away for 16 years, only visiting his house a couple times during all that time. When he is away, he's communicating with the land manager with lengthy letters, three, four, five pages long, giving him instructions to do this, make sure that is done, have you planted this, I want to try to do this next. We have that exchange of letters. Gives us a tremendous advantage in being able to represent Mount Vernon as accurately as we do in today's world. You should be considered the current garden overseer, but there's been many that have come before you. Have you got any good overseer stories about your predecessors? Yeah, there's some. I'm number 37. I don't know if that number is exactly correct, but I'm honored to be the current gardener, whatever number I am. They were all pretty competent in their practices. Washington called one clever because he was so good at grafting trees. Probably one of the cutest ones is when Washington's trying to hire a gardener. He's writing to his land manager saying that the gardener should not have any children, but if he does, only one, but certainly no more than two. He just keeps going on and on, giving almost any option possible for the gardener. He was always looking for the Scottish gardener because they were some of the best. I'm thrilled to be following in the footsteps of so many great gardeners. I hope that I'm continuing their tradition of maintaining a beautiful Mount Vernon. Tell us about the people that worked in the gardens during Washington's time. He hired gardeners under the Articles of Indenture, so they would come over, he would pay their way, and they would have to work that to pay Washington back. Some of them stayed for many years. There was a German gardener named John Christian Eller who was here for a number of years. They had a bit of a falling out, but apparently after Washington passed away, he actually returned because there is something in the notes about a German gardener saying that he used to work here. There is one from Holland, England, and then of course you had your Scottish gardener at the very end of his life, which Washington said that he was dedicated, sober, passionate about his work, and that in short, he's the best hired servant I've ever had. What makes it even better is that he says he has never been happier. I think that's really wonderful, and it certainly rings true for me. For being here at Mount Vernon as long as I have, my life here as a gardener has been a very happy experience. What did the garden go through between Washington's death and until the time it was bought by its current owners? It started to fall and disappear rapidly. Visitors' accounts have been occurring since Washington lived here. People visiting, and they write in their diaries or letters to friends, which is tremendously valuable to us, for that is our Polaroid to the past. Washington died in 1799, and visitors in 1801, 1802 are saying that it's deteriorating, it doesn't look anything like it did during Washington's time, so things just started to fall apart a little bit. You didn't have the money, you didn't have the dedication maybe to do as well. Not to say that work wasn't being done and things weren't being cleaned up as best as possible, but definitely it was noticeable to visitors that it was in a bit of disarray. When the Ladies Association purchased the property in 1858, things started to change, of course, quickly. And of course, Mount Vernon is in their hands today, it's a beautiful, beautiful site. Did they buy it from the family? They bought it from John Augustine Washington, the fourth Washington that owned the property before it was sold to the ladies. It cost them $200 ,000, and with that they received 200 acres, where others said you should take everything down but the mansion, because that's all that's important. They made the decision that they wanted to keep everything that was there during Washington's time, which was absolutely the right thing to do. We have all the outbuildings. It's an amazing opportunity for visitors to come to see an estate, a plantation, as it was during the time of the owner. Are there new discoveries being made through modern archaeology and research, or do you feel like you've re -established everything there? No, there are new discoveries all the time. It's amazing. Archaeology, the science, is becoming more and more exact all the time, with radar and LiDAR flyovers and just all these wonderful techniques that they now have. We're still finding letters that we didn't have before. Eventually we may find the plan that Washington did for the Bowling Green. We have the plan's key that is in his hand, but we don't have the actual plan itself. You can never write the final chapter in this adventure that we're in here from Washington's time till now. We try to represent things as accurately as we can, but we may find a new letter or something that will totally alter our interpretation of what we were using or going on to create an area that we thought was accurate, but new information may change that, and we will go back and make those changes so that it's historically accurate. Where did Washington acquire his plants? Initially, the landscape was completed by nothing but trees and shrubs that he found in his wildernesses surrounding Mount Vernon. So it's certainly a native landscape, and he identified these plants in the wintertime by structure and bud and had them dug and brought back. He did say that he was looking for exotics. He loved plants of all sorts. Now, we don't know if an exotic to him was Mexico or South Carolina, but what we do know is he said he wanted plants outside of his geographic area. People sent him gifts of plants often. Also he ordered from three of the principal nurseries of the time, John Bartram in Philadelphia, William Hamilton in New York, and Prince on Long Island. He ordered a lot of these plants and that he was experimenting with and putting within his landscape. I heard a story about a Franklin tree. Was that ever a part of the estate? The Franklinia, I think it was actually ordered from Philadelphia, and we've tried to grow them any number of times. We can't get them to survive. They're very finicky. They need to be in a spot they're really happy with, and so far we haven't found that spot on the estate, unfortunately. What's the significance of the Bond Plan? A gentleman named Samuel Vaughan visited Mount Vernon in 1784, I think it was, or 83. He was a landscape designer. He did a good bit of work up in the Philadelphia area, actually did some work around Independence Hall. He came and visited Mount Vernon, and in his sketchbook drew the plan of the estate, and then went back to Philadelphia. We drew a beautiful big plan that was very, very accurate. Washington said that you've drawn my estate accurately except that you've enclosed the view with trees, and so the only problem that Washington states is when looking from the house down the Bowling Green, down a vista to the forest beyond, there were two willow mounds that were planted on the Bowling Green. They weren't meant to act as punctuation points. No planting would occur within that, so you had a wide open view to the west. Whatever reason, Vaughan decided to draw trees all in there. In Washington's eye, it was all correct except for that. So it's a beautiful plan, archaeologists have used it, and all the buildings that he shows on that plan are where they find them when they dig in the soil. So he was recording the existence and not proposing new things. There's been some debate about that because Vaughan was a designer, and some say, well, how do we know that this is something Washington had, or was Vaughan drawing what he thought it should be? The written account seemed to support what Vaughan was drawing was accurate. So it's all about interpretation. We could look at two passages somewhere and interpret it both totally differently. I think the Vaughan plan is amazing. I think it's as accurate as we can possibly get. You've mentioned the Bowling Green a couple of times. What grass did they use in the Bowling Green? Their grass was called goosegrass or speargrass. They also had rye, and it's even bluegrass. It was a very coarse grass. Coarse grass was kind of important, actually, because they mowed it with the English sigh, and a very fine -bladed grass would be very difficult to cut with that implement, whereas the wider -bladed grass, they could cut quite nicely if they had a good sharp edge on their sigh, and the sickle, of course, would have been the weed eater. The Bowling Green was meant for games and entertaining and would have been mowed on a regular basis, rigged, rolled, and mowed right up until you may have a drought or something where the grass would stop growing, just like we have in an experience today. What variety do you grow there now? Weeds. It's just, I'm serious. It looks great from a distance, but if you walk up on it, it's just clover and creeping Charlie, and if it's green, I'm fine. We don't want to use chemicals on the lawn. We have a lot of visitors, a lot of children running around, so it's just as natural as possible. We overseed and everything, but no, just don't look too closely. Well, that'd be more accurate to the period, I guess. You know, I don't know. It'd be interesting to see the grass back then. It was maintained in a way that it was intended for them to bowl. They had lots of games with the hoops and other things, so it was used a great deal as a green for entertaining. How do you cut it now? Oh, we have John Deere's to go 13 miles an hour. It's pretty nice. You know, front deck mowers, it's great. Is that a reel? No, my goodness, no. Years ago when I started, our only riding mower was a Toro reel. Now, nothing against Toro, okay, but that thing never worked. Poor man that was operating, he was a World War II vet, and he was always in the shop just standing here waiting for his mower to work. So no, it's not a reel. My dad had a reel mower, and he was always working on it too. My dad's way to fix anything was with a screwdriver, not to actually tighten any screws. He would just beat on it. He was so upset. You've got the serpentine pass. What materials did they use? It was a combination of gravel and clay, pea gravel, smaller grade gravel, and it was cobblestone up around the circle in front of the mansion. Washington said if he could find any alternative form of paving, he would certainly use it because gravel roads were constant maintenance of raking, rolling, adding new gravel to keep them from being muddy all the time. That's exactly what was used in the gardens as well, was a gravel type path. Is that gravel mine from the Potomac? Washington talks about a gravel pit. It would seem as if they got a lot of it from the Potomac, and they would have sifted it to get the right size stone that they wanted. I think there were a couple sources, but not real clear on it. What kind of staff does it take to maintain all this? In horticulture, my responsibility has to do with anything that deals with chlorophyll and manure. The gardeners, just like in the 18th century, they said a garden an acre in size will require one full -time gardener, and so every principal garden we have is one full -time gardener working in that spot. Then we have a swing gardener that does all the smaller gardens and helps in the other gardens as well. We have a landscape gardener that takes care of all the non -exhibition areas. It's truly bare bones. We have some summertime help, college students, some high school. College students love it. We give them as much opportunity to learn whatever they want if they want to work in the greenhouse or use equipment. It's a really great program that we have for that. Then we have our livestock crew. We have five full -time livestock employees that maintain the genetic line of three very rare breeds, and those animals are here for interpretation as well. One thing I just want to share is that Mount Vernon is a very special place. People come and they don't leave real quickly. I've got almost 53 years. Our five livestock staff combined have 92 years of service here at Mount Vernon. It's just truly amazing. Wow. What type of livestock? We have a milking red devon, beautiful reddish -brown cow, aussebal island hogs, hog island sheep, and a Narragansett turkey. So all these are on exhibition at our Pioneer Farmers site, which is a site that we created in the 1990s down near the river. That's a site where we interpret Washington the farmer. That's the livestock's playground. They get to take the animals down there, the oxen, the horses, and work the fields. So it's really very exciting. It helps bring the estate to life. Are you taking the manures and the straw and things like that and using it in compost, or how does that all work? 100 percent. That's all we use. We have huge piles that we are able to windrow with using a manure spreader. We always have these windrows, just these lines of the material that is whipped around by the manure spreader. The row is about maybe eight feet wide, ten feet wide, and it's about six feet high. The oldest windrow is used as the fertilizer used in the gardens. And once that's gone, we windrow the next row over to aerate it again. We just always have a source of compost that we can use in the gardens, and it just works out beautifully for us. How long does it typically age? It doesn't take long, really. We have a pile that's been here for so long that even stuff that is not that old, maybe three months or so, when you mix it up with the other, it turns out very, very well. In the 18th century, Washington would take manure from the stables and just put them in a dung repository for a fortnight or two. You're only talking two or four weeks, and then they thought it was readily available for the gardens. So it was much more rapid for them than it is for us. Are there any special approaches that you take to maintaining a historical garden? The approach to maintaining a historic garden really is visual. We want them to see a garden that is planted in the manner that would have been in the 18th century. We want them to see what an 18th century garden looked like. As far as our actual practices, it is really no different than what would have been going on in the 18th century. Our tools may be a little sturdier, a little nicer, rakes, shovels, soil life, and everyone has one of those on their bill. You can do anything with those. As far as planting, we're definitely concerned about height derangement more than color coordination. We want to make sure the plants we plant are appropriate to the 18th century. Paths, the box which should be trimmed, are very short. They were never intended to be a backdrop for perennials, just as a border. That's the main thing. We want it to look right. The way we take care of it, that hasn't changed for 250 years. What are your biggest challenges with the garden? People, compaction, really the damage that comes from, especially kids, I used to share that the worst pest we can have is a child that's been on a bus for five hours from somewhere, gets here and the chaperones go, go, go, and they just start running. Back when we had big boxwood, they would just go and run and jump in and break a branch of a 150 year old boxwood within 10 seconds and that's hard to control with any kind of spray or whatever. But I developed to have a hard trap that was a bit larger. I found out I put an iPad or something in there, I could catch five or six at a time and I would let them off at the West Gate. The chaperones would eventually find them, but at least we got them out of the garden.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1387: One Bitcoin Will Be Worth $1 Billion By This Date - Fidelity
"Let's get it. In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis, as well as breaking news. Google Cloud to digitize El Salvador's governance, healthcare, and education, as well as Elon Musk's ex moves closer to crypto payments with their newest state license they just received, as well as breaking news. The SEC's first deadlines to approve seven Bitcoin ETFs are coming over the next week. We'll also be discussing Grayscale's roadmap to a Bitcoin spot ETF following the most recent SEC triumph, as well as Fidelity, one of the world's largest asset managers that currently control over four and a half trillion in assets under management are predicting a $1 billion price action for each Bitcoin. In fact, did you know they started accumulating Bitcoin all the way back in 2014, literally almost a decade ago? We'll also be taking a look at overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. 87. That's right. I'm your host JV. And we have a jam -packed session for you today. Looking at the market watch here, we can see Bitcoin after almost staying above 28 ,000. Unfortunately, it broke that support and we're back down to 27 ,200 at this time, but Ether also back in the red down 2 % for the day trading at just above $1 ,700. And checking out coinmarketcap .com, we're barely sitting above a trillion dollars, which is that milestone we've been sitting at for quite some time regarding the overall crypto market and about 34 billion in volume in the past 24 hours with the Bitcoin dominance at 48 .9 % with the Ether dominance at 18 .9%. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we have XDC up 8 % trading at 6 .4 cents, followed by TonCoin up 6 % trading at $1 .75, followed by BlockStax up almost 3 % trading just under 53 cents and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week. Yesterday was a sea of green as the price action pumped literally $2 ,000 in a span of 30 minutes off of the news of the SEC losing their trial versus grayscale with the conversion of the GBTC product into a spot ETF. But today we have corrected some with HEXB crypto greed and fear index. We're currently rated a 49, which is neutral. Yesterday was a 39 in fear last week at 37 and last month a 50, which is neutral. So there you have it. How many of you are currently bullish on the king crypto? Let me know. And how many of you are anticipating a lower price action so you can keep stacking them sats on the low? Holla at your boy. Now let's break down today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what is popping right now in the markets. As you can see here, Bitcoin drifted towards $27 ,000, which again, we're just sitting above $27 ,200 at the time of this recording. At the Wall Street open, the dust settled on the digital asset manager, grayscale's legal victory. Here you're looking at the Bitcoin one hour candle chart. Now data from Cointelegraph showed a positive verdict for grayscale against US regulators, sparking almost 8 % gains. Bitcoin managed to tap $28 ,100 on Bitstamp, its highest in almost two weeks, before returning to the current level. So despite closing the daily candle above two key moving averages, these had yet to return as definitive intraday support. And on the day, analysts were quite cautious. In a quick take post from on -chain analyst Crypto Quant, he goes on to share, noting that the grayscale move had originated on derivative exchanges. So despite funding rates remaining fairly neutral, there was a clear absence of value. However, it is difficult to see that the spot exchange led the price increase when the Bitcoin price rose yesterday. The reason is that the trading volume ratio shows that it had decrease rather than increase. Now additional data showed trading volumes were still below those seen during the upticks of earlier this year, quoting them here. Of course, there is a tendency for prices to change significantly, even with small trading volumes, because of the overall liquidity in the crypto market, which has decreased. However, it seems that there is a need to be a little cautious about the fact that this rally leads to a dramatic rally. Now let's discuss many similarities to Bitcoin's all -time high. According to crypto analyst Brett Capital, quoting him here, we're seeing many similarities between the double top of 2021 and what we're seeing right now, he warned. Should the similarities play out and Bitcoin produce a full fractal, 26 ,000 would flip from support to resistance to initiate further downside. So for the time being, we're seeing a lot of signs really playing into all of this in which he reiterated alongside this chart. Now, another target analysts are talking about right now is 23 ,000 becoming increasingly important. Rec capital likewise flagged that level of 23K as a prominent level versus the 2022 bear market bottom structure and inverse head and shoulders pattern, as he mentioned here, that's the level that we can see the price rebound from. So there you have it. Let me know if you feel we're likely to drop sub 25 ,000, potentially touch 23 before rising back up. Or do you think we'll take off from here, off of one of the biggest news stories of the year, which is a big fat L for the SEC and a big fat victory for the entire crypto industry. Let me know your thoughts. And with that being shared, fam, now let's discuss breaking news coming out of El Salvador with Google, which is actually quite interesting. Yesterday, I saw Nigel Bokele made a tweet and this is what it was in regards to Google Cloud announced a new partnership with the government of El Salvador. Interesting, right? On August 29th to establish an office and provide Google distributed cloud services in their country, the partnership aims to digitize the country, update government services and improve the healthcare and educational systems. The GDC will also help bring infrastructure closer to where data is generated for El Salvador. Bokele, the country's president said he believes El Salvador is quickly becoming a hub for innovation. As he shares here, El Salvador is moving forward. We believe technology and foreign investment are key for development. And here's where he announced the partnership in this, I shouldn't say tweet anymore, but on this post on X quoting Bokele, Google plans to establish operations in El Salvador and he shared the official press release from Google. Now, Thomas Curain, the CEO of Google Cloud said he believes cloud computing can truly transform Latin America. As shared here, access to cloud computing has dramatically expanded across industries and regions throughout the world, he said, enabling both small companies and the public sector to utilize the very same apps and services as more mature markets. Now, Cointelegraph also reached out to Google Cloud for additional comments on its recent expansion. The additional GDC infrastructure will help support El Salvador's active stance on Bitcoin adoption and integration into society. It allows for Bitcoin full nodes with ordinal protocol support. And additionally, back on August 8th, a few weeks ago, El Salvador granted the crypto exchange Binance a license to offer crypto services to users in the country. Bitcoin had began as legal tender in El Salvador back in 2021. And recently the Bitcoin Beach Initiative took to the classroom and taught over 25 ,000 students about Bitcoin, helping them earn a Bitcoin diploma via the country's educational system. The country has already seen immediate returns on the program with the example of one teenager who earned the diploma and then returned to his former school to teach the educators about the digital asset. That's what's up. I think mass adoption is likely to continue, especially in places like El Salvador that are ahead of the rest of the world. And I think more and more major companies are going to be opening up shop because it just makes so much sense. Why wouldn't they? That's why Binance just got their license. Jack Mallers Strike Company just got their license. Bitfinex got their license and they're opening up shop. And I believe that the Bitcoin game theory is in full effect and will continue to play out as the days go by. And with that being shared, fam, now let's break down our next story of the day. As you probably know, major news was actually released yesterday regarding X, which is the platform owned by Elon Musk to integrate crypto payments. We made a pretty big development, so let's break this down before we dissect the ETF deadlines. Rhode Island's regulators have granted X, formerly known as Twitter, a currency transmitter license, marking a step forward for the company's foray into the financial services sector. The license is legally required for companies conducting financial activities on behalf of users related to sending and receiving money, a definition that includes both fiat as well as crypto assets. Now, this approval will allow for X to custody, transfer and exchange digital currencies. Now, X's Rhode Island currency transmitter license was approved on August 28th, two days ago, according to the nationwide multi -state licensing system, NMLS. The move marks an important step forward for Elon's push for X to become an everything app, which would include crypto as well as fiat payments. Now, naturally, social networks like X are massive, so this could help usher in that mass adoption. Now, while sources have suggested that X's upcoming payments feature will initially only offer support for fiat currencies, Elon had reportedly instructed developers at X to build the platform's payment system in such a way that crypto functionality can be added into the future. Yeah, if you're not integrating Bitcoin into your payment system, then do you even have a payment system for the future as Bitcoin is the future of money? Just saying. The approval comes nearly two months after X secured money transmitter licenses, also in Michigan, Missouri, and New Hampshire, which were well -approved on July 5th. X's latest license marks a total of seven American states it secured transmitter licenses in, so my guess is they're going to have to continue getting more and more licenses for all the states. It remains unclear exactly what financial offerings will be made available if and when X rolls out their payments feature. People familiar with the company's plans have indicated that X will initially offer fiat currency transaction services similar to PayPal, which Musk co -founded with room for future crypto integration. Do you think Bitcoin will likely be an announcement that they will be accepting crypto payments? I mean, who cares about Doge if you don't have Bitcoin integrated? So, I feel Bitcoin is a given if they're going to be integrating crypto and it seems to be going that way. But how do you feel this is likely to play out? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. And now let's break down everything you need to know regarding the recent spot ETF deadlines for the United States and regulators. And after we discuss all these deadlines, we're going to specifically be talking about the GBTC Grayscale product, getting that victory over the SEC and what that means moving forward with the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF. And then we'll be dissecting Fidelity, one of the largest asset managers in the world, and their $1 billion Bitcoin price prediction. And then we'll wrap up with our live Q &A. So yeah, let's discuss this. The US SEC is facing its first deadlines to decide on seven spot Bitcoin ETF apps, with the latest being September 4th, which is what, virtually five days away amid its defeat to Grayscale Investments in the US Federal Appeals Court. Investment firm Bitwise will learn if its ETF will win the SEC's approval September 1st, which is what, two days away. While BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity, Invesco, and WisdomTree will all be awaiting the SEC's decision for their funds by September 2nd, three days away, according to several SEC filings. So, that's right around the corner. It's going to be a big week. Meanwhile, Valkyrie is set to hear back from the SEC on September 4th. The US Court of Appeals ruled on August 29th that the SEC's rejection of Grayscale's app to convert their GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF was arbitrary and capricious. But this doesn't mean that the SEC must approve Grayscale's app or others in the future, says Bloomberg ETF analyst, James Safart. And in August 29th Bloomberg Review, he explained that Grayscale's win will definitely increase the odds of a successful outcome for the SEC. But he is unsure when that day may come though, as the SEC can delay his decisions and has two more proposed deadlines for each fund before being forced to make a final decision on the 240th day post filing. Now, what a shame it would be if they make us wait the 240th final day before giving an answer. But hey, don't run it by them. I mean, don't put it past them, especially with Mr. No Clarity Gary as the chairman. But anyways, for the awaiting applicants, the final deadlines for the SEC are all in mid -March of next year. And as someone shared here, odd and free, 99 .9999 % chance that the world doesn't know that the SEC has to decide on seven Bitcoin ETFs within the next three days. And this does include the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, Bitwise, VanEck, WisdomTree, Investico, Fidelity, and Valkyrie. The suits are at our doorstep per each. And how many of you weren't aware of that, that the decision within the next seven days is going to be on those seven major asset managers. Now, after the August 29th ruling in favor of Grayscale, the regulators have 90 days to file an appeal with the US Supreme Court or apply for an en banc review where the full circuit court can overturn a ruling made by a three judge panel. However, the SEC hasn't made clear what the next move will be. If the SEC doesn't appeal, the court will need to specify how its ruling is executed, which could include instructing the SEC to approve Grayscale's app or at the very least revisit it. But either way, Safer only saw two viable options for the regulator. The first option is to concede defeat and approve Grayscale's conversion of its GBTC as a Bitcoin spot ETF. But alternatively, the SEC would need to revoke the listing of Bitcoin futures ETFs entirely or deny Grayscale's app based on a new argument, says Safer, quoting him here, the second potential avenue is to deny on reasons not used before yet, which I have been saying for months could have to do with custody or settlements of Bitcoin, which is not something that futures ETFs have to worry about. The SEC has made a lot of noise around custodians. However, fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst, Eric Balchunes, considered the odds of the SEC revoked in the Bitcoin futures ETFs as highly unlikely because of the SEC reported openness to Ethereum futures ETFs, in which he makes a great point, quoting Eric here. This guy turned the last paragraph of Judge Rao's legal smackdown today into a MGMTS stylish banger, really captures the modern. Well done. Well, so there you have it. I guess this is some song I haven't even listened to yet. So I'll jam to it a little later on. We'll see if it's any good. But anyways, fam, how do you think this is likely to play out by the SEC? Do you think they're likely to approve any of these seven ETFs or do you think they'll just continue to push it back until next year? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. Now let's dive deeper with the latest breaking news regarding the grayscale ETF and their conversion of their product into a spot ETF. And did you know that their product literally has over 600 ,000 BTC? Hence, they'd be the perfect candidate for a spot Bitcoin ETF because they already hold the underlying asset. They don't need to purchase it. So I mean, they'd be a prime candidate along with BlackRock. Which one will get approval first is the million dollar question, but let's break it down. In a seismic shift for the Bitcoin industry, the DC Circuit Court ruled in favor of grayscale investments yesterday, which is breaking news, which we've been hearing all across social media. Now, Jake Stravinsky, the chief policy officer at Blockchain Association, described the ruling as massive, emphasizing it's extremely rare for a federal circuit court to find an agency like the SEC in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Stravinsky stated that the DC Circuit soundly rejected the SEC's view that grayscale's ETF proposal was not designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices. So good for them. He also pointed out that the court did not order the SEC to approve the proposal, but rather mandated a review of grayscale's proposal with the court's ruling in mind. Stravinsky speculated on two possible scenarios for the SEC's next steps. One theory suggests the SEC could find another reason to include no clarity Gary towards crypto. And alternatively, the SEC might take this as a semi graceful exit from their anti ETF stance, especially under political pressure from traditional finance sectors ready for a Bitcoin ETF as we are long overdue. They first rejected the first Bitcoin ETF for a spot in the United States over a decade ago. And the app was from the Winklevoss twins with Gemini, just FYI. Now, many other issuers have proposed ETFs this year, include BlackRock and Larry Fink throws heavy punches in DC. Therefore, here's what the lawyer thinks. The only question is if the SEC wants to make this more painful for itself. Trust me, if there is another denial, there'll be another lawsuit. I strongly recommend that the SEC picks sooner. Let's see. Now, James Safart, the ETF analyst over at Bloomberg, corroborated the significance of the ruling stating it's a complete and utter rebuke of the SEC spot Bitcoin ETF denial orders. And quoting him here, I was initially thinking something like a deadline of 45 days or 60 days, but nothing in here saying that. However, he noted that the SEC has 45 days to file for that en banc hearing, which would involve all 17 judges on the court, good Lord, as opposed to the initial subset panel of only three judges. The Bloomberg analysts also outlined two main motions for the SEC. If they still wish to prevent the spot Bitcoin ETFs from listing, they either need to revoke the listing of Bitcoin futures ETFs or denied based on new reasons, possibly related to custodial or settlement issues, which have been a focal point for the SEC staff accounting bulletin 121. Now, Adam Cochran, partner of CEHV added another layer to the timeline speculation. He alludes to the SEC's pending decision on six other Bitcoins spot ETF filings due by September 1st for Bitwise and September 2nd for BlackRock, Fidelity and others. Here's what he had to share. Some folks are getting ahead of themselves thinking that grayscale decisions means bulk approval of ETFs by this Friday. Likely not the case. My hunches were looking at a late October, November timeline for an approval still, unless the SEC appeals in which case next spring. Now I'm not a gambling man, but if I was a gambling man, I just want to throw out there. I don't think the SEC has any intention to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States anytime soon because their actions demonstrate the complete opposite. The only thing they have interest in approving are more futures ETFs so they can continue to manipulate the markets through derivatives, which are financial weapons of mass destruction. Quoting Warren Buffett, it is what it is, but nonetheless, this is still a victory overall because they could only push it back for so long. And especially with BlackRock demanding, I shouldn't say demanding, but in so many words, they're the one that started this domino effect with new ETF apps arising with the SEC. They are the largest asset manager in the world, controlling over $10 trillion in assets under management. So I think if Larry Fink wants something, it's going to get done. But the million dollar question becomes when? I think they're going to push it back this year and probably spring next year, we're going to finally start to see the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States. And as soon as we get that approval, that can help usher in literally trillions upon trillions of dollars that are currently sitting on the sidelines directly in to the best crypto asset in the world, which is none other than BTC. If you'd love to see that happen, let me know. And by what date or deadline do you think we're likely to get that first approval? And you already know once that approval comes, money is going to start ushering in and the Bitcoin price is going to go parabolic and in perfect time because we also have another major bullish catalyst around the corner. Six months out, the scheduled halving is estimated to be sometime in April of 2024. So between the ETF apps being approved by the United States regulators and the Bitcoin halving, I couldn't be more bullish on Bitcoin right now, which leads us to our next story of the day, which is going to be a $1 billion prediction from one of the largest asset managers in the world, which is Fidelity. Let's break this down. Then we'll dive into our live Q &A. Make sure to say hello in the live chat. Let me know where you're tuning in from. A massive shout out to everyone interacting. I greatly appreciate all the continued support. So here we go. $1 billion. That's a lot of zeros. That is nine to be exact. In 2021, a billion dollars seems like a lot of money. FYI, Fidelity initially made this prediction in 2021. I also want to point out here from some tweets, Fidelity head of sales, quoting them here, we started mining and accumulating Bitcoin all the way back in 2014. I bet you a lot of you did not know that. This was kind of under the radar, but they have been accumulating BTC almost for the past decade. So is this a surprise that they're predicting a $1 billion Bitcoin price by 2038? They're putting their money where their mouth is. But anyways, we have Julian Timmer, Director of Global Macro Fidelity, believing that one Bitcoin could be worth $1 billion per coin by the year 2038. Send it and let's go. Timmer also believes that the orange coin could hit $1 million before this decade is over, which means by the year 2030, roughly seven years away. So that would represent a 20X multiple, the current Bitcoin market price of 48 ,000. But now obviously we're half that price of what we was. So that would now be 40X. And I know anyone can make predictions like that, but Timmer lays out his cause using his own valuation model and another well -known model, which we all know here on the channel, known as the stock, the flow. Timmer's demand model is based upon Metcalfe's law. Metcalfe holds that as the number of users of a network grows linearly, the value of the network grows exponentially. Thus, if the number of users doubled, its value would grow at four times or the square of two. Now Timmer's demand model grows steadily to about $1 million by the chart. Now, by contrast, now let's discuss the stock to flow model created by synonymous analysts. Plan B is based on the supply of new coins growing at a decreasing rate each year. This occurs because of the built -in happenings every four years. So given increases and adoption and demand, the result will be prices expanding exponentially. Indeed, the price of Bitcoin has grown approximately 10X every four years. Take that, Peter Schiff. These are facts, not just by 50 % slowdown in supply, pretty powerful stuff. That's right. Now, stock to flow predicts even faster growth in the price than does Timmer's demand model, especially after the year 2030. As I commonly cover here in the show, the stock to flow model is projecting roughly a half a million dollar Bitcoin price past the halving in 2024. In fact, the model shows a very wide array in their expectation, anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million dollars, with a half a million being dead in the middle, hence in a couple of episodes previously, if you missed it, we discussed Plan B's most recent prediction, which he shared on his YouTube channel, that he believes the Bitcoin price will be north of $530 ,000 per coin proceeding the Bitcoin halving in 2024. But let's get back to this math. This is the stock to flow model you're looking at right here. Now let's go back over here. This is some more insights. Timmer stated the value of the dollar changes in relation to other assets. And he further pointed out that just a dollar invested in stocks in the 18th century would be worth $4 billion in today's money. Isn't that insanity? Talk about super hyperinflation. So going by this assumption, $1 million in today's money can be worth a billion dollars in 20 years time. Good Lord. You better start stacking them now, fam. So changes in the dollar's value, especially depreciation over several decades, render the same amount with less purchasing power, which is why huge sums back then appear less by today's standards. For instance, $1 million can purchase a lot of significant things a few decades ago, but in today's perspective, reasonably higher end houses in the US cost between, I would say $200 ,000 and $500 ,000. The same $1 million may not suffice for the same class of houses today. This is a fact. Just here in Puerto Rico alone, I've seen the real estate market literally shoot up 100 to 300 % since moving to this island roughly four years ago. And that's not just an exception to the rule. It's all across the United States, hyperinflation. I mean, check out the rent prices. That will give us some insights to the true nature of inflation. You can check out Zillow, check out real estate five years ago in comparison today, and you'll probably see something quite similar. But anyways, there's an increasing number of billionaires across the globe. Facts. Some observers even believe we may see the first trillionaire in this lifetime. I think it could potentially be CZ, the finance CEO, or even Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy. Now, the same applies to organizations with several companies now passing the $1 trillion mark valuation cap. Fidelity previously pegged Bitcoin to hit $1 million in initial prediction made by Jerry and Timmer by the year 2035. However, he ultimately said, we're way too conservative. Let's move this target on up from $1 million by the year 2035 to $1 billion by the year 2038. So there you have it. Do you feel the Bitcoin price can likely exceed their conservative target of $1 million by the year 2030 within the next seven years and hit as high as $100 million to $1 billion per coin by the year 2038? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. And don't forget to check out cryptonewsalerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
The Café Bitcoin Podcast
A highlight from Grayscale, SEC Update with Sam Callahan + Lighting Update with Jesse Shrader from Amboss.Tech - August 30th, 2023
"Hello, and welcome to the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the best way to buy and learn about Bitcoin. I'm your host, Alex Danson, and we're excited to announce that we're bringing the Cafe Bitcoin Conversations Twitter Spaces to you on this show, the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast, Monday through Friday every week. Join us as we speak to guests like Michael Saylor, Len Alden, Corey Clifston, Greg Foss, Tomer Strohle, and many others in the Bitcoin space. Also, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Make sure you get notifications when we launch a new episode. You can join us live on Twitter Spaces Monday through Friday, starting at 7 a .m. Pacific and 10 a .m. Eastern every morning to become part of the conversation yourself. Thanks again. We look forward to bringing you the best Bitcoin content daily here on the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast. Good morning. Welcome to Cafe Bitcoin. What's up, Peter, Jacob, Nicky, how are you guys doing? Morning. What's going on, man? Still living off the hype from Bitblock Boom. Incredible time. Yeah, it was. I had a good time. I'm still trying to digest yesterday's news. And, you know, just some just some great conversation in yesterday's show, actually. Yeah, we've had a little time to digest the news that Grayscale won his case against the SEC. I think there's been a lot of misinformation from the news about what that actually means. So we can kind of get into that a little bit. But really bullish development. I'll be curious to see what the SEC does now. The ball's in their court. I haven't been able to verify it, but I saw I think it was Bloomberg Intelligence, somebody was tweeting about that Bloomberg Intelligence thinks that we could have an ETF by like next week, which just kind of sounds absurd to me, but something I wanted to bring up. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely in the realm of possibilities. I mean, if the SEC just kind of wipes its hands clean of all this, just kind of rolls over and says, all right, we're going to we're going to prove this spot Bitcoin ETF, you know, finally. We're going to kind of give up on this fight. It's definitely in the realm of possibilities. You know, I find it kind of hard to believe. But and then how would they go about doing that? Do you think they would just kind of do a couple like pick some winners or would they just approve all of these applications at the same time? And it would be kind of a free for all free market competition of who gained market share. And then who would win that market share, do you think? So how do you guys think it's going to play out? I don't care. I'm going to get the popcorn out. You know, the the meme with with Michael Jackson watching Thriller in the in the in the And theater. I'm just going to sit back and watch what happens with FOSS and Terrence and their bets. What is the bet? Would FOSS think that there was going to be an ETF? I forgot. FOSS has a 10 to one or is it a 10 to one or a hundred to one bet with with Joe Carlos Are and I'm I don't remember what Terrence is. I'm sure Terrence has something going on, too, because, you know, he can't he can't miss out on a on a good good wager. Maybe it's a hundred to one. I forget if it's 10 to one. Ant, do you remember? He's down there. Well, if they if they do roll over, let's say that they just roll over, give up on this fight and approve a spot 20 ETF. Personally, I think that they would kind of just approve most of them, if not all of them at the same time. I don't think they want to be picking winners and losers. Now, if they don't do that, it would be curious to see what they do with the grayscale, because, like, obviously they could be a little salty about losing this case and they can turn around and say, OK, well, we're going to approve BlackRock and Fidelity and, you know, and Fasko and then we're going to keep you guys waiting to kind of hurt your business and suck capital out of your fund and into these other ETFs. But, you know, maybe they won't do that. Maybe they'll just approve them all. Like, I'm curious what you guys think. How would that go down? I mean, if that happens, like the pettiness at the end, I think they probably have a massive lawsuit on their hands. I don't know if you guys saw this other news, though, but it was a small Brazilian asset manager called Hashdex applied for US spot Bitcoin approval as well, and it kind of went under the radar. But it's different than all the other ones. And the reason being is they don't have kind of one of these surveillance sharing agreements with Coinbase to prevent market manipulation, like the BlackRock ETF filing or the Fidelity one, all of them, really. Hashdex is different. They're basically an application that allows them to acquire spot Bitcoin through the CME. And so basically it holds a mixture of spot and futures position. So it says the fund will use the CME markets exchange of physical transactions to acquire and dispose of spot Bitcoin instead of transactions on unregulated spot exchanges. And so it's just like a different strategy than all of these other ETF filings. And it's interesting because they brought on Brian Brooks, the former head of the OCC, onto their board of directors recently. And so this Hashdex filing, it's interesting and it's a new entrant into the ETF competition. It sounds like Wall Street trickery to add a few more basis points to the annual expense ratio. Definitely. But it could, you know, it's just like kind of a different approach. So maybe that would be enough for the SEC to be like, OK, you guys are kind of acquiring the Bitcoin through the CME, which is a market of significant size, and they're comfortable with the surveillance that occurs on there. And so perhaps this is enough. And then you have this dark horse Brazilian crypto asset management firm that actually wins the first spot Bitcoin ETF. That would be like, you know, 100 to 1 horse winning the Kentucky Derby or something. Sam, I'm sorry, I'm just not, I don't have the expertise to comment on ETFs or how they're going to play out or what the SEC is going to do. It's, I mean, I'm just going to sit back and watch. It really doesn't affect me one way or another. I self custody my Bitcoin and the price is just going to do what the price is going to do, regardless of what I want or what I do. Talking like a true long term hodler stacker, Peter. I love it. Hey, Dom, good morning. Yeah, I thought that'd be a good cue for me because I have no problem talking about things for which I have no expertise, as if I have expertise. So I just thought that'd be a good cue for me to answer. And good morning, everyone. Good morning. Is he only super quiet to me? No, he's sounding faint like you got to put the mic closer to your mouth or something. How about now? Better? So what do you think, Dom? Any comments for what we were just talking about in terms of the ETFs and any further thoughts around the grayscale news from yesterday? Yeah, interesting little pop and then watching things kind of settle down. I think, you know, again, I'm of this camp that I believe that there's some coordination here and I don't believe that the SEC genuinely wants to prohibit a Bitcoin spot ETF. I believe potentially this coordinated dance is is exactly that. It's a dance and people are trying to line stuff up, time stuff up. I don't know what is being lined up and maybe, you know, I'm just overthinking it, which is very possible. But, you know, I still believe that the pressures from institutions to have access to a Bitcoin vehicle like a spot ETF prior to the halving, the pressure is going to be and has been continuously building. And so I'm of the camp that I think it's coming sooner than later. In fact, you know, I even I gave FOSS that birthday present of, you know, taking half his bet with Joe Carlos, sorry, just for fun. And I think we're looking at this this year could be very wrong, but I think that pressure is building up. So it'll be interesting to see what happens in the near term, whether they I'm kind of curious to see the options the way I understand it. Sam, you probably have a better grasp is there's a few others coming up soon. Potentially we may have some more info on Friday.
Bankless
A highlight from Scaling Ethereum To The Next Level with zkEVM
"Hey, Bankless Nation. I'm very excited about the episode today. David is out, and this episode gets technical at times, so I have ETH researcher, Justin Drake, whom I'm sure many of you know. He's co -hosting with me today. Some context as we get into this episode. So we did a previous episode a few weeks ago called The Sci -Fi Roadmap to Ethereum, and in that episode, Justin Drake described the end game for Ethereum, and he said this, we snarkify everything. In today's episode, we explore exactly what that means and how we do it. How do we snarkify everything? Our guest today is Brian Redford. He is the co -founder of what might be the world's first Type 1 ZK EVM, and if you don't know what that means, that's fine. Neither did I, as we're getting into this episode, and it turns out that building a Type 1 ZK EVM is an important part of delivering what Justin Drake called an enshrined roll -up inside of Ethereum. More on that in just a minute, but before we get in, just wanna mention something quick from our friends and sponsors over at Safe. Safe is the multisig wallet we recommend for crypto, and you've heard us talk about smart contract wallets many times, how they're gonna 10x the crypto wallet experience. We definitely believe that's true, and Safe recently proposed their modular open -source safe core protocol as a standard for the industry so that we can all move forward and transition to the smart contract wallet future, and they want you to check it out, so there's a link for the devs in the show notes. Safe really believes this is an opportunity to create a unified standard to smart catapult contract accounts onto the EVM. The standard itself is unopinionated and vendor agnostic and maintains interoperability and smart contract diversity, so go check it out. And also to check out, Safe is organizing the first ever conference dedicated to smart contract wallets and account abstraction. That happens the second week of December. There'll be a link in the show notes to go register for that as well. So thanks to Safe for building into the frontier. All right, speaking of the frontier, back to Ethereum enshrined rollups. So why are we having this conversation, and why now? The compute era is scaled with Moore's Law, but the blockchain era scales with something differently. It scales with cryptography, specifically cryptographic breakthroughs like zk -SNARKs, and all of this zk -SNARK stuff, the SNARKifying of the EVM, it's all happening a lot faster than any of us previously thought. It's happening so fast that a project called RISC0 just came on our radar last week, and they've already produced a working version of the world's first zk -SNARKified type one EVM. What kinds of things could this unlock in the future? Why is this important? Well, what if we could convert an optimistic rollup to a zk rollup? What if we could upgrade Ethereum's layer one from a single threaded EVM model to a multi -threaded EVMs, so that compute was virtually limitless and free? What if ETH validators themselves had the ability to run from something as small as a smartwatch? All of these are possible unlocks with this technology. This is crazy cool, deep stuff. Down the crypto rabbit hole we go, and it gets technical at times, but it's absolutely worth holding on for the ride. This is crazy cool stuff, and we're going deep down the rabbit hole today, and this gets technical at times, but I think it's absolutely worth it to hold on for the ride, because this is key to understanding how blockchains actually work and how they scale. And in so understanding, I think this type of thing can help you avoid bad investments and dead ends, and there are a lot of those out in the space as well. We're gonna get right to the episode with Brian and Justin, but before we do, I wanna thank the sponsors that made this possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange for 2023, Kraken, go check them out. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry, the place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade. On Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real -time market data, and lightning fast trade execution, all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro .kraken .com to get started today. Mantle, formerly known as BitDAO, is the first DAO -led web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle network, a brand new, high -performance Ethereum layer 2, built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle treasury is one of the biggest DAO -owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub -communities from around web3 onboarded, like Game7 for web3 gaming, and Bybit for TVL and liquidity and on -ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone -based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO -led layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantle .xyz and follow them on Twitter, at 0xmantle. Arbitrum is accelerating the web3 landscape with a suite of secure Ethereum scaling solutions. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum 1, with flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. Arbitrum Nova is quickly becoming a web3 gaming hub and social dapps like Reddit are also calling Arbitrum home. And now, Arbitrum Orbit allows you to use Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own layer 3, giving you access to interoperable, customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you are a developer, enterprise, or user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible. Faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas needs. So visit arbitrum .io, where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app with Arbitrum. Experience web3 development the way it was always meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction -free. Bankless Nation, I am super excited to introduce you to Brian Redford. He's the co -founder of a ZK EVM project that we're gonna find out a bit more about on today's episode called Risk Zero. Brian, welcome to Bankless. Thanks, glad to be here. Also excited to be joined yet again on Bankless by Justin Drake, he's an Ethereum researcher and repeat Bankless guest. Justin, how you doing? I'm doing great, thanks for having me again. But I guess this time, maybe as a host asking some technical questions. Yeah, how's it feel? The tables have turned. So Justin, I'm gonna tap you in as my co -host today. So David is out and we're gonna talk about the next generation ZK EVMs. So I think we're talking to Brian about the world's first maybe ZK EVM. That's a type one ZK EVM. And I'm not even sure the words that I'm saying or what they mean. So we'll absolutely need to define that. But David's out right now. So Justin, you're gonna tap in and help me with this. I feel like this is a continuation though of a conversation that you had with him on ETHCC. And I think Bankless listeners may have listened to an episode entitled Ethereum's sci -fi roadmap or the sci -fi roadmap to Ethereum in which there was this really interesting part. And I love that episode, by the way, where you were describing the ability of us in the future of Ethereum to snarkify the EVM on kind of main net, on the base layer. And that sounded really interesting to me. And I think that ties into the conversation that we're about to have. So tee this up for us, if you will, Justin, as a continuation on that conversation. I know we're talking about sci -fi Ethereum future stuff, but what does it mean to snarkify the EVM? And how does that tie into the conversation we're about to have with Brian today? Right, so big picture, we're actually going to snarkify all of Ethereum. And there's two big components that need to be snarkified. One is the EVM, which is this virtual machine which processes Ethereum transactions. And then the other part is the beacon chain. Now, once we've snarkified these two things, we'll be in a position where compute won't ever be a bottleneck for Ethereum. So it means that, for example, as a validator, you won't have to really have beefy CPUs. So you'll be able to be a validator on your smartwatch. If you're building bridges between L1s, you'll be able to have another L1, verify the state of Ethereum without having to redo all the computations themselves. It also has implications for light clients, for what we call enshrine roll -ups, which are super high security roll -ups.
KAILASH HAZARI IAS ACADEMY /ADMINISTRATIVE CONSULTANT SERVICE (WORLDWIDE)
"radar" Discussed on KAILASH HAZARI IAS ACADEMY /ADMINISTRATIVE CONSULTANT SERVICE (WORLDWIDE)
"Hello Friends. With the radar network across the country by 2025 on January 15th, 2023, union minister of state court, science and technology. Doctor jitendra Singh had outlined plans to cover the entire country with droplet. With the radar network by 2025. The entire country will be covered by the Doppler with the radar network by 2025. Two more accurately. Predict extreme weather events Doppler with a router works on the principle of Doppler effect. This radar gives information about regional jets occurring in an area of 400 kilometers. TRC weather forecasts, including heavy rainfall, thunder storms, fog and cold weather have improved by 40 to 50% in the last 5 years. The government plans to set up 2025 district at group metro units by 600 60. Doppler weather radar works on the principal of Doppler effect. This radar gives information about seasonal occurring in an area of up to 400 kilometers. This radar captures ultra fine. And each able to detect the direction of the ultra. Fine, water, droplets, floating in. The air. It updates information related to the side of the droplets, their distance and their speed, abdomen. Based on this data, this radar makes accurate with the forecasts, the first Doppler with the radar in India, installed in general in 2005.
The ChoNilla Podcast
"radar" Discussed on The ChoNilla Podcast
"Chapter fate. The black movie based on it so the term emerites is used the bible to refer to certain highland mountaineers land of canaan his brandon genesis of ham bear described as a cop people of great stature of cedars who had occupied the land east and west of the king. James version caused the ameri and people syria instead of.
The ChoNilla Podcast
"radar" Discussed on The ChoNilla Podcast
"Of fatal shootings as well as hundreds of rape gang. Wrong by the security forces. Oh my god. It's a form of colonialism. Wow barrick has acknowledged the problem by offering victims such some compensation on the agreement. They sign away their rights to ever legally sue why or in the congo for example in two thousand five and ville mining ltd based out of quebec allegedly provided logistic support and transportation to the congolese military as it made its way to the port city of kilowatt where massacred hundreds of people. Geez Yeah this is a story of david with fuck. Yeah or write to. Tv is security. Force or a calgary based tv. I pacific as employs its own paramilitary force in a remote region of the philippines to intimidate and remove indigenous population from their ancestral. Land can mind for goal of canada. Y'all oh canada burkitt's canada. It's it's interesting because this reputation that's beginning to be noticed in the worst world the fact that they're in one hundred countries starting to create. Now where canadian folks or canadian people who are part of these industries in the and working in these industries in different parts of the world. If you're canadian doors we're getting a bad name is as canadian fat. It's creating for them to not even put like you know how you save when you travel. Put a canadian or that's done. Oh oh johnny. Oh yeah actually place. Like south america hyundai. Yeah yeah So says canada has a longstanding history of getting involved in foreign conflict under the banner of human rights right and we certainly enjoy- maintaining the veneer of our role on the range is one of the good guys right. Well why aren't we holding our mining companies to those same standards that we hold other guilty nations to after learning about what's happening with canada's extractive sector. It's impossible to distinguish canadian. Foreign policies from canadian mining policies are hypocrisy is gonna wearing so it's global and it's global to the point that like yeah like regions of guatemala was militarize last month. The right to protest or or for meetings has been suspended by the president. following clashes between local. Protesters are concerned for their drinking water and employees. Vancouver-based ho resources inc like. They should be indigenous. People are trying to save the planet. They what they're doing has threatened to pollute let's say the lampe river and watershed that accounts for sixty percent of the country's clean water. So yeah yeah yeah well. It's not looking good. No speaking of exploitation. Yeah member kevin o'leary from shark tank. Mister nice guy. I can't remember what he called. Mr something guy. But him and another shark named kevin harrington. I don't know if they were on together ever but the pitch to do american version together. Sure yeah well. Twenty people which shark tank when people from across the country are suing them accusing them of scamming and manipulating hopeful entrepreneurs. Yeah so they created these two businesses called a in venture ex and ideas on and basically what they were doing to entrepreneurs that we're approaching them they were saying like coming invest in my shit. We might get you on shark tank. And i might get this not cool. No no. they're promised that they would receive help with crowdfunding to start their businesses if they invested financial resources into them so they're they're suing because they have not done any of that stuff. Yeah they just took their money. Yeah talking about being dirtbags. Wow yeah the last thing. I got greg leaks. Husband of real house wave. Starting nina leaks died. Sixty six actually died. Just i'd yeah i saw. The niimi leaks was trending on twitter. And i and then. She tweeted something about preparing to pass on like that was preparing. Yeah all right greg. He's like battling at the moment but oh no he's he's gone. Yeah poor knees past as they say yeah. Yeah well. I hope she gets through her friends. We're not really her friends towards the end but who knows what's going on. I think she'll be okay. I hope so. I helped you. Just got people in your corner. Having a rough go. They got married like nineteen ninety-seven and then got divorced and then they got remarried. So yeah there's a lot. Humans complicated really R.i.p greg leaks. Yes new york city. At least they reported eight people died as new york and new jersey declared emergency. In record rains they had like hurricane. Haida dumped like a historic amount of radio like north. Like last night. Showing you video like. Oh my gosh. This is new york city. Look at this. I made i. I like tweeted people. I know who has either. And my family. And i checked with my cousin a coal like. Yeah no we're good. Thanks for checking in that. She's like i know this random question but which eat alligator unlike design. I you are my family. What kind of chicken to see girl. If y'all are okay and then you send me a question like would you pick show all the alligators. Were thinking media. Try i would i would. Would you tell your horse. Yeah snail wonder. If it's a meat that you could like cultivate council stinky. My go-to i'm thinking is like shrimp but dirty is shrimp and mighty right. Maybe i don't like that kind of me. I don't know like shrimp. Like moving tastes fishy. I think they tastes fishy like if you take shrimp and you harden it by ten times ten and you have a little bit of that muddiness. Because they're in like you know swamps and she took banana texture inc that. Oh yeah. I've never because we saying alligator. I've never touched anything. That's made out of alligators sky. I've i've eaten alligators soup. You have yes. But i couldn't tell like there was nothing in it that i was like. Oh that's the alligator and you wanna just use chicken and call it alligator. I don't know really. Don't remember the texture any now. I remember eating it and being like not impressed. I'm not it's i i didn't feel like i gotta tell everybody about this alligator sue. Yeah you're not like this experience. Yeah shark. I've tasted Which i regret. Because i contributes to the overfishing. Yeah absolutely so police. In new york city to get back in new york city reported eight that as basement apartments deaths. That's like what was being flooded. The most like basement apartments and which is really hard because a lot of students a lot of young. Yeah if you're struggling financially and the only way to live in new york is too hot. Like a basement is more affordable. A lot of people have been affected in that class.
The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"radar" Discussed on The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"Plus you'll be entered to win an iot grab bag which is basically it'll be whatever connected devices i have roaming around the house Some of them will have been tested but most of them are just new in box. So i know. I've got a wise outlet right now. I know that. I have a our doorbell wireless doorbell so you know if you have a teenager you could give it to them and you bring the door bell outside the room and i'll probably find one or two other things to stick in there so to enter to win that you need to give us a call at five one two six two three seven four two four and this week's question actually comes from glendale arizona and us there you go. Let's hear it. I can keep them arizona. Last week came in gave a review on the wise law. And i couldn't help but kinda relate to him which is functionality updated. How why is updating their products in big fan of why the have lots of their products and the problem is that they feel like they're getting too big and too many cry that's the backlog is getting too large for them to a their products. And you know. I have a vacuum for example. And i'd like to say hey man i may go back office functionalities not there yet and otherwise watch and i Get text messages. But it doesn't just as comes from other doesn't tell me where it comes from so that's kind of annoying in back in the day. I know there are with just being the cameras. They updated lot and I just wanted to get your thoughts on that understanding an iterative and flexible. Wait for update. But it seems like their way backlog. Now i just wanted to get your thoughts on that and see what you think. The future holds for them thanks again. Let's show by okay keith. I feel like since kevin has all the wise gear or most of the why scare. I'm gonna let kevin answer this question. So i'm going to say right off the bat i think keith observation is spot on. This is strictly my opinion. Just based on looking at what wise has been doing and they've been doing a lot over last year so many products this we were joking about a little earlier in the show but they don't seem to be delivering the promised features were the features that people really want in a timely fashion as keith has noted the cameras those to get updates quite often and they're very useful updates but the other devices keys matches the vacuum which i have not tried the wise watch which did try so many other devices from wise. Just don't get the attention that they really should to be viable products in the smart home and keep people happy. I think right now. It's all about price. People are buying lives for price. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you just have to understand what keith is pointed out and what i have seen because i agree with them. You're not buying these for what they may be able to do. You better be happy with what they can do it launch because you just don't know when additional features are coming. Yeah and i would say what would i say. I don't know what would you say. Kevin you're gonna have to say. Yeah you're right okay in. There's two cents. I only have some outlets. Which do exactly what. I need them to do. And are not fancy. And a scale. Which i don't know i think it got an update some point in time but i never step on it so i never know until it doesn't doesn't matter i could care less. He's not information can suffer with outdated software. They can deal with it. Okay well thank you for sharing your observation. And letting kevin talk about this for a bit and remember if you would like to be part of the show give us a call at five one two six two three seven four two four and you'll be entered to win that particular grab pack and that concludes this part of the show but please stay tuned for our guest. Chris grove the chief evangelist at mizukami networks. He's going to be talking about industrial iot security ransomware and all of the fun stuff that hitting our news feeds every day but before that while here from our sponsor this week sponsor is silicon labs. Hey everyone we're taking a quick break from the internet of things. Podcast message from our sponsor this week. Sponsor is silicon. And i'd love to welcome. Jake allah matt who is vice president and general manager of the home and life. Business unit silicon labs. Today jake is going to talk to us about works with which is silicon labs virtual conference coming up in mid september and for those who don't know silicon labs. Can you tell us a little bit about the company..
The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"radar" Discussed on The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"Plus you'll be entered to win an iot grab bag which is basically it'll be whatever connected devices i have roaming around the house Some of them will have been tested but most of them are just new in box. So i know. I've got a wise outlet right now. I know that. I have a our doorbell a wireless doorbell so you know if you have a teenager you could give it to them and you bring the door bell outside the room and i'll probably find one or two other things to stick in there so to enter to win that you need to give us a call at five one two six two three seven four two four and this week's question actually comes from glendale arizona and let's there you go. Let's hear it can keep them arizona. Last week came in gave a review on the wise law. And i couldn't help but kinda relate to him which is functionality updated. How why is updating their products in big fan of why that have lots of their products and the problem is that they feel like they're getting too big and too many that's the backlog is getting too large for them to update their products. And you know. I have a vacuum for example. And i'd like to say. Hey man i may go back office functionalities not yet and otherwise watch and i get text messages but it doesn't just as comes from other doesn't tell me where it comes from. So that's kind of annoying in back in the day. I know there are with just being the cameras. They updated lot and I just wanted to get your thoughts on that understanding an iterative and flexible. Wait for update. But it seems like their way backlog. Now i just wanted to get your thoughts on that and see what you think. The future holds for them. Thanks again. that's show by okay keith. I feel like since kevin has all the wise gear or most of the way scare. I'm gonna let kevin answer this question. So i'm going to say right off the bat i think keith observation is spot on. This is strictly my opinion. Just based on looking at what wise has been doing and they've been doing a lot over last year so many products this we were joking about a little earlier in the show but they don't seem to be delivering the promised features were the features that people really want in a timely fashion as keith has noted the cameras those to get updates quite often and they're very useful updates but the other devices keys matches the vacuum which i have not tried the wise watch which did try so many other devices from wise. Just don't get the attention that they really should to be viable products in the smart home and keep people happy. I think right now. It's all about price. People are buying lives for price. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you just have to understand what keith is pointed out and what i have seen because i agree with them. You're not buying these for what they may be able to do. You better be happy with what they can do it launch because you just don't know when additional features are coming. Yeah and i would say what would i say. I don't know what would you say. Kevin you're gonna have to say. Yeah you're right okay in. There's two cents. I only have some outlets. Which do exactly what. I need them to do. And are not fancy. And a scale. Which i don't know i think it got an update some point in time but i never step on it so i never know until it doesn't doesn't matter i could care less. He's not information can suffer with outdated software. They can deal with it. Okay well thank you for sharing your observation. And letting kevin talk about this for a bit and remember if you would like to be part of the show give us a call at five one two six two three seven four two four and you'll be entered to win that particular grab pack and that concludes this part of the show but please stay tuned for our guest. Chris grove the chief evangelist at mizukami networks. He's going to be talking about industrial iot security ransomware and all of the fun stuff that hitting our news feeds every day but before that while here from our sponsor this week sponsor is silicon labs. Hey everyone we're taking a quick break from the internet of things. Podcast message from our sponsor this week. Sponsor is silicon. And i'd love to welcome. Jake allah matt who is vice president and general manager of the home and life. Business unit silicon labs. Today jake is going to talk to us about works with which is silicon labs virtual conference coming up in mid september and for those who don't know silicon labs. Can you tell us a little bit about the company..
The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"radar" Discussed on The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"About radar in sixty gigahertz. We've talked about radar before we've talked about ultra wideband before these are sort of related and i learned a lot just talking to you yesterday. I had some misconceptions about you. Wbz and sixty gigahertz and radar. Yes yeah like you just went right to it man. I was going to tell you so. I own up to my floss. Oh i was just thinking we should tell people what was happening. I but okay the news here. There's a couple pieces of news around radar. One is that amazon applied for a waiver with the fcc to put radar in the sixty gigahertz band inside an echo device for sleep tracking. This may sound super familiar. Because google does this with their solely radar systems already in one of their displays. I've tried it out. It's pretty good so a piece of news that is happening but also this week. The fcc was like you know what. Maybe they're sick of filing these. These exemple waivers waivers because they actually filed one with a company called vr for sixty gigahertz radar inside vehicles because they want to be able to detect children. That are left in hot cars. So they're realizing kind of what we've been saying for the better part of two years. That are f- sensing awesome. Of sensing is awesome and using high frequency wireless. It's going to be big for in general. Yes so what the fcc did is. They've issued what they call. Notice proposed rulemaking associated with saying. Hey you know what instead of giving all these waivers outlets just make sixty gigahertz and radar was open up that spectrum and for this type of radar and that is hopefully with a notice of proposed. Rulemaking what happens. Is they file this. And then there's like an endless comment period several comment periods. So this isn't going to happen tomorrow. But this is a really important thing and they want this for products that will work in the fifty seven to sixty four gigahertz band which has lumped under six gigahertz. And they want to set a bunch of rules about their. Fcc rules so basically like how loudly can transmit by loudly. I mean how many how many db's and dp's more dvd's better signal lower battery life. It technical stuff about duty cycles. That sort of so. We'll hear back from companies that want this in companies that are maybe using this band for something else companies. That are worried about it. And it's gonna take a while but alongside of this it's worth talking about the sixty gigahertz band because there's gonna be a lot happening in that space and there's a lot that's kind of confusing so you mentioned there's a lot happening in sixty gigahertz one of the things. We've talked about many times before which is uwb. Your ultra wideband. Usage is such as safer apple airtags. And that's that's one application in the same spectrum. You have radar so that is a totally separate thing. And that's what the fcc's looking at you could have other applications. Such as wifi are f sensing that used the same spectrum. But it would do to a different and you explain to me. Maybe it's worth a quick refresher to me and everybody else. Those differences are actually achieved. Sure so go you can do. Okay here we go. this is this is like deep. Rf stuff and i had to spend. Actually i should do a shout out to national instruments. Because they had two of their engineers sit on the phone and tell me about this in great depth. In if y'all send me let me know if you want me to have them come on the show and educate you to this level of depth. Because it's a lot okay. So ultra wideband refers to how the packets are transmitted. So how how there are f- signals are transmitted. And what they do is they're they're scattered out across five hundred megahertz of spectrum. So that is where the wideband part of this comes in and they are just go. Boop boop boop out there not continuous. So that's first super important so it's really good for transmitting in crowded bands because it's using spectrum very sparsely so yeah the airtags would be a good example of that for yes apple airtags. I feel like there's a wide band things we've talked about. We're going to see it a lot in phones coming up. I feel like google is working on something here too. I think cars with automatic door locks open and handles opening are using or plan to use. Uwb yes and it's important to know that a function of the sixty spectrum is that it's super short range because when you have sixty gigahertz spectrum it attenuates in oxygen rain all kinds of things so this is very close. That radio's need to be close together. So that's something else to consider. Okay now with radar. This is a continuous thing. And they do something with radar they have something called a frequency modulation scheme and this is basically how the packets are encoded so with radar lake solely. Or what we're talking about here. They use something called frequency modulated continuous wave and that is basically like i said how the radio packets are encoded. And this is good because it is purely a sensing technology when we talk about things. Like why sensing they use. Fdm orthogonal frequency direct modulation. I feeling i mess in anger. There's so many acronyms here. You don't really need to know all that. But with wifi sensing that's a communications focused way form so with radar. What you have is something. That specifically designed to detect objects detect the shape of objects and it's also designed to figure out how quickly they're moving and wear which is worth noting because that's how we're getting things like the highly granular breath monitoring from solely and as an added bonus. When is his radar. they're not just using one radio. They're actually using several antennas. They have a four by four by two but might even be four by four block of antennas to get even higher resolution so much more detailed picture of what's going on so that's kind of how that works and that's a lot to know. I know i'm sorry but we thought it'd be worth it because if you listen to this podcast you probably care a lot about iot and you probably want to understand that. Uwb sixty gigahertz different than radar at sixty. Hertz is different than possible. Weissensee sixty hertz. And now we're going to tell you why we think is so cool amazon's obviously using it google using it for sleep checking your breath while you sleep and figuring out breathing rates so they can figure out sleep metrics but you also see like i mentioned with fire..
The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"radar" Discussed on The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
"The hey everyone. Welcome to the three hundred twenty ninth. Episode of the internet of things podcast. This is your host stacey higginbotham and your co host kevin toe full and we have a great show you today we're going to be talking about. Oh the fcc radar sixty gigahertz all in the same stories. We're also going to be talking about ring bolstering security for everyone. Plus we're going to be telling you about biden's executive orders specifically the right to repair stuff but we cover. There's a lot in there. And we found out how to use the madam. A echo devices offline with local control. So we're going to share how that works. Plus google home adds some new features. We've got a new security vulnerability in programmable logic controller which is a big bad deal and wise once again has a new product for you to products actually and most rolla has acquired a access control company. Plus we're going to hear from our guest. Chris grove of masami. He's discussing industrial iot security research and best practices and we're going to hear from our sponsors silicon labs about their works with program so before we get this shows started. Let's hear from.
Under the Radar
"radar" Discussed on Under the Radar
"Their support of this show and really fm so dave. I'm wondering like the watch actually seem kind of a quiet year this year in most ways except they added like this one capability that i think you actually might have a lot of us for. What are you. What are you going to be working on i. I think we were transitioning into the things. I'm most excited about this year. I think number one is the way they added always on capabilities to be apple. Watch which is one of those things where you know that i can i. It's not transformative. it's just it's just this quality of life improvement and make my apps so much richer as a result and so this essentially if you know what i'm talking about is on a series five or six apple watch when you put your risk down currently your app. This kind of frosted glass look that shows the time and it replaces your running app and this is. This is the same thing even if you're doing a workout app or something where there's actually information that you want to be able to show a user an so eight now you can ill a even if you don't do anything it'll just continue to show your application just in a dimmed view like all the time. So you don't have this weird frosted glass thing which is great and then additionally there's all these capabilities that i can do to update the my you i even when it's damned running in the background so if i have a workout app i can show metrics and there's really clever kind of way that they're doing it where you can. The system can throttle the frequency of those and give your app feedback on that in terms of to say you know you're allowed to update your a second. Maybe if you're a workout app but if you something that's not quite as time critical maybe you can get your your interface. Once a minute presumably under the hood it's allowing them to do a lot of battery optimizations and things like that but it's a really cool thing that now you know i third party apps can do the thing that i party..
Under the Radar
"radar" Discussed on Under the Radar
"It might take off with a small number of apps. I don't see a taken off with a big number of apps so that's not the kind of thing that i think. Most apps really need to rush to adopt unless you happen to be like a movie playing app or something but otherwise i. I don't expect that to become a big thing. Even even for my app you've ever overcast. I honestly. I don't think i'm gonna do it unless there's massive demand that i'm not seeing yet but that will probably come later but anyway know because there's not seemingly any of those like customer mandated features that you have to adopt like a new. Ui redesign like some big feature languages. That gives us a great opportunity this year. To kinda back off the the gas pedal on like all the brand new cutting edge stuff and go back and do features and quality control. It's much like how we've talked here on the show about the seasonality of of the apple developer year and how normally the springtime is when you get a chance to pay down technical debt fixed. Bugs you know maybe make some features based on the old. Api's that that you don't need to worry about wc. Changing your plans for the summer comes throws everything in the air and you have to rush to all. The new stuff adopted well this year. You seem to really have to do that so this year we have. I think an extended period of the whole next year where we can just focus on quality tech and features that under our control not having to drop everything to adopt apple's roadmap that they've laid out for us and the good news is that because so many of the of the irs fifteen changes as usual. You're not going to really be able to use a lot of the a lot of them until you can require. I was fifteen. That kind of gives you a year. You know this this this following next year to work through that that adoption rate. And so you know. By next summer we can probably start requiring fifteen we can probably start using acing await everywhere all over our code and all that stuff. We can use the new text engine. We can use all these new. Some there's a lot of minor changes here and there so in a way. I'm actually really happy that there's not more giant user facing stuff because so many people myself now included can't require the new os on day one and so whatever they announced. We really can't use until a year or two later anyway so in this way since there was nothing really pressuring to jump all over this new stuff. We can do it more on our own. Schedules and focus more on other areas of our development that that don't require us to drop everything and quickly rush to adopt the new hot thing trying to summarize the theme. It feels like it's a year like a year of better rather than new. Yeah and so. I can make my apps better. And there are certain things that are new in that but overall it is more that i can sure things up and take end like ross Around off rough edges that Have been annoying or get rid of a bunch of hacks potentially that i have in there or at least you know one thing. I always even if i can't of drop support for although s.'s. Like i can you know my my weird sort of hacked around implementation can be when i show incommunicative unsold on devices running the old s.'s. And i can use the new version For new s.'s. And kind of his a way for me to adopt like there's the way in july. There's a whole bunch of these things where i was doing. You know strange hacks and things around like searching for example like they used to be..
Under the Radar
"radar" Discussed on Under the Radar
"Taking things about previous wwltv's wdc's that were in person the labs and figuring out like new formats for that new ways to do it new ways to give more people access to apple employees and experiences. Because that's that's always been such an incredibly valuable part of the conference and yet it's been so hard for so many people out there to ever have access to that because a because getting to the conference is so expensive and so limited in how many people can even get in and so to have that be broadened out to anybody for free That's really cool that that really is a huge improvement for a pretty big part of the community. I'm very overall. I'm very very pleased with the structure. And i think if it goes back to being in person again i will be happy in some ways in sad another and hope they if they went that way that they would do the same kind of thing where they could preserve what was great about the online if they went back to in person. Rather than destroy undoing. All of the improvements made But now it's probably actually worth talking a little bit about. Actually what was announced. And what was you know the themes and overall. I think we've often kind of you know you don't need us to go through. Api api necessarily. But i think it's all interesting for us to kind of give our broad themes what we're seeing this year and then maybe sort of referendum finish up by talking about the survey that we're most excited about and i think for me overall this felt like a A light year but it isn't light in terms of content. There's a whole lot of stuff here but there are some years. I find where there's the big sweeping announcements things that create a whole new like opportunity in the app store say like widgets last year or their massive fundamental system. Overhauls like when we had iowa seven where you know. Here's a new. Ui language that apple is pushing And there's those big sweeping years and then there's a year like this. Where i feel like apple is most of the changes felt like they were kind of. The apple is fixing Drawbacks or limitations or stumbling blocks on the platform rather than like introducing wild new things and so as an example in swift y. You know there's some things that are kind of new in a new set of additional but largely..
Under the Radar
"radar" Discussed on Under the Radar
"Welcome to under the radar show about independent. Ios app development. I'm marco arment. And i'm david smith under the radar is never longer than thirty minutes. So let's get started so as we sit here at the social policy coffee shop and in a few minutes. We're going to go down the street and get some beer and sausage and maybe some of that awesome vegan indian food. I wonder dave how is. Wbz going for you different than it. Sounds like your experiences. I miss those days a little bit. I mean it is really nice to wake up in my house with my family. You know like not having to travel across the country and spend an apple watch a night in a hotel But you know..
DJ Force X in Conversation
"radar" Discussed on DJ Force X in Conversation
"I think also you know. I've seen a lot of friends struggle with mental health and your myself and a lot of together and helped friends when they need it. And i think everyone's had that each other's backs but you know i've seen people a friend of mine was in a really really really good job and he just got made redundant and he's been a care home literally wiping people's bums cassette and i. Fortunately he must get new job done but he he he he just knew. I need to pay my bills. I'm just going to do what it takes. And that's what he could get and actually fairplay term. He didn't actually want to leave because he really invested in helping the people there and and i'm not a bad spin on on the job. I what my point was more as as a brutal job which he had to do just to pay his bills. So i've had easy but i'm very much looking forward to being able to put on a gig where people who haven't had easy. You can come and just have a big party at the end of the day night definitely. That sounds good. I'm the same position as year in as inasmuch as like my work. It didn't it didn't dry out. They didn't follow. I see the which they continue to pay us for any kind just walking from high either doing like just keep each other occupied really 'cause we got stock of one hundred and twenty of us so they could have easily gone fi especially with the part timers and stuff like that but neither saying that will by just attend these meetings online. Or whatever like repack deputies just to make sure your k- any problems gives a shout. They were like really good on that front and up in san san very fortunate position. The company i'm working for you know because all my so of other works. Id jiang and all that kind of stuff done He's been gone overseas. Simon as you guys it's been gone. I've adapted i've gone online now. Had this pocus for like seven years now but like the side of it of staying livestreams say and in. It's not it's not paying. You know it's not paying but it's it's it's letting me do i love and stuff like that and the job i work is. That was giving me the thing to do that. Which is great economy being in that position..
DJ Force X in Conversation
"radar" Discussed on DJ Force X in Conversation
"Anyone needs a knighthood in at the end of this mark probably deserves because he has been working and all the people the music venues trust. Tonight's what can so hard to save venues in crisis who emergency fund helping every single venue. Apply for the arts counseling grants. They have saved a lot of music. Venues gauging the room reading all the stuff in the groups and stuff you know. There's a lot of very worried people because music venues hand to mouth afford this guy. Say they all struggled with when not lucky like europe where there's love grant. Money and stuff for touring artists and music venues cultures. Anything cultural for some reason. They don't like worked really really hard to keep these venues going but he posted this article. That really stuck with me. And not being able to hold for word that the point was don't pay attention to the doom scrolling stuff on your phone because everyone is going to be inherently negative about stuff because that's just people's reactions follow the data and the data is great. We have given. I think the time speaking in the low twenty million first doses out sixty six million people. So you said of the way there for the first doses. Being told to say say to stasis so. That's really promising. Considering a couple months ago. Portugal at belly done one hundred and fifty thousand. They are struggling in europe. So i think england you may be see become a bit shop for the next year in a bit but from speaking to lot people industry. I mean some the big companies. They believing ki ki for all this year. Twenty twenty two is looking like a busy year for for obama. Some speaking to everyone's booking for work but just getting past the summer. I'm sure we'll have setbacks and everyone will think the worst thing in the world festival season. I mean i'm an optimist and i'm really trying not to be an optimist about it. I think i will at the end of festival. Season have been to a couple whether it's my one whether it's unreal really hope the end of the summer. I'll be stood at attention. Having a era my hand watching a band because that's something really wanted to and the same weekend is green man. I've worked for for seven or eight years so easy to a couple of days there and go by a couple more days there. If i can somehow finish the year in the summer festivals. I'll be very pleased. But i'm more realistic about key. Three q four. I think will begin a gigs. At the end of the year. For all the reasons we've talked about up to this point been really really honest. My festival weren't indo.
DJ Force X in Conversation
"radar" Discussed on DJ Force X in Conversation
"There is i. Toronto worry about things like people being tracked through things like vaccine possible but equally. I guess the other side of the coin some countries. You have to get back to go to but equally there are ways around it if you do not have the vaccination for whatever reason whether you can or you don't want to you can still get fifty minute tests the way into an event but you have to. You have to say yes things that for me personally. I actually was saying this in a festival. Group has a day where i just thought why are people kicking off about this. We've lost a year plus work. Yeah no one's been together get their year. Now it's been a festival it's ten festivals the before covid this is. This is my love. This is what i love thing. And i've just put it mentally to one side and said okay. This is just what it is. But if i have another year because people just won't prove that they don't have that that is something that would annoy me. Yes there's a lot of things to be annoyed about in the world but you know that what we're sitting here talking about is something that brings a great deal of joy to people in the country in the world. I don't have the stats in front of me. But the figure of white contributes the economy is in the billions in the employment. There are some people who spent all year vocationally working in in festivals and gigs. And this is what they do. And i mean i know some incredible From a house engineers and crew who've been working the house being a dentist poke hospice people can treat them like. Yeah and then. Like i was touring around europe last year. And now i have this guy just talking to me. Like i'm a piece of shit so i would happily say i the very least owed happily take fifty minute tests on the door to see the everyone in that room can have peace of mind and everyone can be back to work the bums compla- because the misconception about the music industry is most people in there. You know the bands. They don't make a lot of money if they make money from it. They're doing well if they make a lot of money from.
DJ Force X in Conversation
"radar" Discussed on DJ Force X in Conversation
"It works so much well as far as customer as well because You know you get the variety now. You don't wanna pay watch identical bands playing one after the other. Yeah exactly the same thing. When i was in a band as well. It was like always love playing gigs that we're in a heavy metal band. Gigs tying with my indie bands and stuff just purely because one. Yeah we'll stand out because we're a bit more aggressive but it was just so of having that like a difference like i because you're going to stick around and watch and i would rather be. I don't ahead my band three times. You know what. I mean like you say. You don't hit four of the same band shot skies with a vendor hatami shea. The play gio. I festival guys. Yes yes now trying to make an found it But yeah going on from from that one that one the first one. How'd you feel that that wednesday because obviously there are a lot of people data which was great. It was nice to see that place talks out on both levels You have me during this off the stuff with stiff biscuit and power nut. Yeah pound the day before yet. Yes yeah and i by fan tastic. I love like the cover band powered mcgrath as well. Because i found the band that fit into my mine. My radiation grade. Eight music radio show because it concentrates on electric cross save stuff and that was fun. But how how did it go for you guys. I mean what was the sort of like you know general out from it. Yeah i mean. I think we all felt it. Went fantastic if you could have given us a paternity the festival again. The next weekend we probably would've far from being upset exhausted. Yeah it was stressful. Because i've worked for quite love festivals. I worked for lots of what. For lots of other people to wet for the boardroom for.
CompTIA Volley
"radar" Discussed on CompTIA Volley
"Hello everybody welcome to. I'm caroline april and as always looking for my good buddy. Seth robinson that's how you doing well Currently on what is it april sixteenth. I'm staring outside the window in. It is a blizzard here in new hampshire after having basically a nice spring for the beginning part of april So typical new england weather. But while it's sort of. I woke up to this just a little bit of a ground. I hope it's unfortunate Lingering effect of winter i. It's definitely been nice. I think i might have mentioned on the podcast before even beyond getting vaccinated which we've both done I feel like. I'm looking forward to the warm weather. No kidding just being able to get get out and feel the sun a little bit but Hopefully not too much longer. yeah. I think there's a lot of vitamin d deficiency going on with people. The pale glow of my computer monitor. Hasn't quite to have fit the bill. No it hasn't but we have a guest today one of our favorites. So i'm really excited to welcome david sobel dave. Thanks for having me catch up with you guys again now yourself. Identify yourself because we all know you in the industry. But i never know what title you have. These days saw these as i go by host of the business tech podcast as generally what people know me for these days. You want to give a little little plug else. What's been going on on your podcast lately. Yeah so I each day. I spend about five minutes coverings couple stories of the day and i asked the question. Why do we care to give some perspective to it. Services companies and of course msp's and solution providers of what they care about. What's going on in the in the news and give some perspective on why things are important to maleable of course on all your favorite catchers as well as a weekly version now on youtube watching the video at comes out on fridays nice. Yeah we've We've been on youtube for a little while now too. And that seems to pick up a little bit of a different audience than the pod. Catcher stuff does the the demographic differences. We can do a whole discussion about the difference in demographics between the audiences. But it really is about just being sure to offer a little bit of that independent perspective. You know i've been on my own now for a year and a half or so former. Msp former vendor now giving independent analysis on all this stuff. You're a thought leader now. Well i create thoughts. I won't necessarily say they're always leaders. Well we'd like to hear some of those thoughts today. The last time we had you on the podcast we did underrated a-rated and were doing another under type theme today but these are things that are under the radar things that are happening in the tech industry..
Daily Dose Football
"radar" Discussed on Daily Dose Football
"Let's talk about sincere. These headlines are so big today. Let's talk about the one angle or aspect we really haven't talked about with straight and that's the eagles and i don't think we've mentioned anything about the eagles. They kind of just go under the radar because it's the big trade between the dolphins and the forty niners in the dolphins. Try to minute another trade. But you gotta get that guy props. He moved down from the six twelve and arguably the guy that he wants at the six spot might be available to twelve spot. And i actually think that. This was a tremendous move for harry roseman and eagles because now going from pick sixth twelfth. I had i had them going country. Devante smith a pick six and a twelve icy devante smith being there on the board in the vonts myth in my eyes is the best receiver in disres- class. People are gonna say that your march chase is the top receiver but no you have to look at the statistical performance of devante smith can't look size can't look at anything else. This watch the tape and you will see the. He is the best receiver in this class. So the eagles made a really good move and they could potentially be getting a guy like devante. Smith's thought pick twelve so eagles not losing out on much. And they're getting a i in exchange an pick one twenty three so great move for the eagles as well. I like the teams trading down. The eagles is definitely interesting. One you know. Do i love it. This is a team that desperately needs like a star on their offense. Now you know jalen hurts a like. I think he's got a i think he can't be a good info quarterback but he needs a lot of help. I think joe it hurts seats. More help than most as far as receiving package and travis fogelman. Jr whiteside and Who else do they have. I mean i really can't name anybody else on their depth chart really greg ward. Those guys aren't going to do it. You know if they move on from urge they cut out sean. Jefferies sean jackson's gone i. I didn't really care for a lot of those guys. Is you know good weapons to to make your young quarterback better especially when you look at all these teams look at what. They're doing look look at what they're doing with tom brady when he's a you know an mvp type of season and they're still putting a tonio brown with them and they're still bringing burnett back things you know it's like all these teams are filling their rosters with talent. You know in the long term. I think it's probably a good move for the eagles. Because i'm not really sure there. They're even a competitor. Even at bat is their their division is It's a good move..