35 Burst results for "Six Month Long"
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Week in Review - Episode 24
"Cycling isn't just cycling. It can be cycling or cycling or even cycling. Peloton isn't just one thing. We have classes that will ease you in and classes that will make you sweat and a range of instructors so you can find your match. Whatever you're in the mood for, we can get you in the zone. See for yourself with a worry free 30 day home trial. Visit one Peloton dot com slash home dash trial terms apply. Welcome to the Mike Gallagher Show Week in Review podcast. It's just about everything that's happened this week. I'm Eric Hanson, and we begin with President Trump, who made some controversial statements about abortion this week and called Ron DeSantis's six week abortion ban a terrible mistake. We might as well get this out of the way. We got President Trump with an answer to Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press and her debut as the new host, which gave a lot of ammunition to Trump haters who want to hurt him and try to wreck his chances of becoming the nominee in 2024. This is an interesting dilemma that Republicans have. Here's the dilemma. Pro -life fighting for the sanctity of those unborn babies, the sanctity of their lives, the sacredness of the innocent. That's a centerpiece that's foundational for the Republican Party. And whether we like it or not, this particular debate that we're having in America over abortion is crushing us at the ballot box. And Donald Trump, I believe, was trying to address that with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. Let's get it out of the way. I've been dreading this all weekend. Well, it wasn't all weekend. I mean, this first broke, I think, Saturday. They gave a little preview of his answer. I don't love his answer, but I also don't love the way Trump critics are pouncing on him, claiming he's not pro -life. I got into a big knockdown drag out, as I expected I would with my friend Mark Davis in Dallas, because Mark is now hell bent on proclaiming that Donald Trump is not pro -life. And he's saying that because of this exchange with Kristen Welker yesterday on Meet the Press. If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were re -elected, would you sign it at 15 weeks? Are you talking about a complete ban? A ban at 15 weeks? Well, people are starting to think of 15 weeks. That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now. Would you sign that? I would I would sit down with both sides and I negotiate something and we'll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years. I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean, the sanctus would really design a five week and six week ban. Would you support that? I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. But we'll come up with a number. But at the same time, Democrats won't be able to go out in six months, seven months, eight months and allow an abortion. Now, there are people who took that answer and proclaimed that Donald Trump is not pro -life, like it's important to proclaim or make some kind of declaration that he is not pro -life. I believe it's ridiculous to claim that a guy who's the only president to ever attend the March for Life, the guy who promised to get Roe v. Wade overturned because that was terrible federal. That was a terrible federal ruling and appointed Supreme Court justices who did just that to claim that Donald Trump is not pro -life is preposterous. It's absurd. It's virtue signaling. And perhaps it's just. The opportunistic way you chalk up some points for Ron DeSantis, because clearly Team DeSantis is pouncing on Donald Trump over this remark. I believe two things can be true at the same time. You can be pro -life and you can acknowledge that this issue is killing us at the ballot box. And we're losing elections. So President Trump has some campaign trouble to manage. Meanwhile, our current president can barely navigate a simple speech. If you miss Joe Biden at the U .N. this week, well, buckle up. Remember when Trump went to the United Nations and gave a really good speech and the media freaked out and said how goofy and wild and unpresidential and unprecedented it was, they had a complete meltdown and he gave a really decent speech. Compare that to the appearance of Joe Biden yesterday at the U .N. Now, even as we have all our institutions and drive creative new partnerships. Let me be clear. Certain principles of our international system are sacrosanct. Both Biden and Kamala Harris do the same thing when they say, let me be clear, run for the hills, because when they say, let me be clear, you're going to see nothing but mud and gibberish. I mean, babbling incoherently in front of the United Nations. And if that wasn't wild enough, you've got the Ukrainian President Zelensky. He marches in with his entourage. You know, I used to say I was torn about Ukraine. People that I respect insist that we have got to continue to fund the Ukrainian battle with Russia, that the American people have to help Ukraine with its border. We dare not have a wall for our own border, but we better, by God, help Ukraine with theirs. We better fund them. We better give them the missiles they want. We got to give them the ammunition they need. We need to. We got to stop Vladimir Putin. And if you push back against that, you're a stooge for Vladimir Putin. You're a Putin puppet. Just ask Tucker Carlson. When Tucker dared to express the belief that the American people have bigger fish to fry than funding Ukraine, he was thoroughly denounced and renounced as a stooge of Vladimir Putin. So there goes Zelensky marching into the UN yesterday with his bodyguards and his entourage, and he gets up to that podium. And what he said was pretty stunning. I expected he would stand at that giant podium in front of that ugly green background at the UN and talk about the need to fund his military. Talk about Russia's aggression against the Ukrainian people. Talk about Ukraine's place in the whole worldview of things instead. We got this. Even though humanity is failing on its climate policy objectives, this means that extreme weather will still impact the normal global life and some evil state will also weaponize its outcomes. And then people in the streets of New York and other cities of the world went out on climate protest. We all have seen them and when people in Morocco and Libya and other countries die as a result of natural disasters and when islands and countries disappear underwater and when tornadoes and deserts are spreading into into new territories and when all of this is happening, one unnatural disaster in Moscow decided to launch a big war and killed the tens of thousands of people. No wonder loony leftists have the Ukrainian flag in their front yard. You would think the Ukrainian president had bigger problems than climate change. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers hit the picket lines this week. They made a few modest demands like a 40 % pay raise in a four day work week. Speaking of the UAW strike, I watched Sean Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers Union on the Sunday morning news shows. And you know, I admit I'm not a real big fan of unions. In fact, quite the opposite. I kind of think that unions have helped destroy many aspects of our economic system. In fact, it's a commonly held view that pension plans that used to be in place contributed to the decline of the U S automakers. Well, now the UAW is demanding pensions come back. They want the old fashioned defined benefit plan. And as Bloomberg points out, pensions are not worth striking over. You know what I find interesting about the UAW dispute? I heard all the talking points about how the corporate executives at the big three automakers make too much money. That's a Bernie Sanders mantra. That's an Elizabeth Warren trope. The executives make too much. You know, a company can be producing billions of dollars of revenue, but the Bernie Sanders of the world want to cap what an executive at one of those companies earns, which I always find so fascinating. It's as if they want to equate the guy or gal on the assembly line with the big automakers. Well, they're not the same. I mean it'd be nice if everybody made the same amount of money in life hate to break it to your life doesn't work that way. Some people make more than others and admittedly a lot of it is luck. I don't deserve the living that I make, but I'm very blessed to make a good living. There are people make a lot more than I do and I don't begrudge them anything, but simply because somebody that might have a show on television might make 10 times what I make. I don't think I should make what they make simply because we do the same essentially same thing. I mean, and Democrats always have such hypocrisy on this issue. Like somebody just texted me, how many homes does Bernie Sanders have again? It's more than one. But here's something that I noticed when I heard Sean Fain, the president of the UAW talk about executives compensation and how we're not making enough and we're taking steps backwards. I mean, the fact of the matter is the union gave up the defined benefit pension plan in a previous negotiation. Now they want it back. When you give up a benefit like that, you're not going to get it back. That's not realistic. And here's what I'm interested in. You know what was missing from all the coverage of the UAW strike? They never talk about what auto make auto workers make. Now I kept hearing how somebody on the assembly line can't feed their family. Really? What do they make? I kept hearing that Sean Fain kept saying the auto workers have taken three steps backwards. Really? How much do they earn? I know what they want to make. They want a 40 % pay increase and they want to only work four days a week. Now that's a pretty good deal.
The Financial Guys
A highlight from Growing Unease: Current Administrations Approach to Security and Travel with David Bellavia
"What do you think they're doing with cash, right? What deal do you make where someone says, I'll bring a box of money to you? Yeah. What do you, it's, this is a state sponsor of terrorism. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and my fellow citizens. America's comeback now. starts right Welcome back Financial Guys podcast. Mike Speraza in studio live today with a guest in the studio. I haven't had this in a long time. Staff Sergeant medal of honor recipient David Bellavia joining me for about a half hour today. David, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So I'm going to stick based on your background. I'm going to stick with a lot of military stuff today and I want to start, we'll go all the way back to the beginning of the Joe Biden presidency. The Afghanistan withdrawal, in my opinion, did not go very smoothly. I'm sure many people listening agree. What were your overall thoughts of that withdrawal and how it actually ended up happening? I know we lost, you know, sadly lost 13 soldiers in that, in that withdrawal. People say we went off the wrong air base. People say that we shouldn't have gone out in the middle of the summer. There was a lot of different things there. What were your overall thoughts on that? I think it's like the worst day in American history since Market Garden. Just absolutely. And the reason why it was so difficult was it was totally unnecessary. So let's rewind to the Obama trade, Bull Bergdahl and the three first round draft picks. They get Marshall, they get MacArthur and they get Patton that end up the resurgence of the Taliban. These men not just go back to the enemy, they go back to the battlefield. They're in power when the government falls. You have misinformation coming from the White House that the president of Afghanistan is leaving with billions of dollars on his plane, which wasn't true. And then you leave the equipment, the cash. There's no recovery. We're getting reports of sales of American equipment left in Afghanistan in Southeast Asia. We're moving material across the globe. Our children will fight and pay and have to atone for these miscalculations. Let's talk about that. You being in the military and you knowing that area too, why did they just find it the easiest way out to just say, you know, just leave that billion dollar billions of dollars of equipment there and not think, again, if it was me and I'm speaking that someone that's never been in the military, but if it's me and I'm the president, I'm thinking, OK, I don't want to leave all our weaponry there. I don't want to lose any of my men. Number two. And number three, I want to make sure that everybody knows when and how we're getting out of there. And it just felt like poof. One day they said we're getting out of here. Well, it's because the military didn't make any of those decisions. I mean, look, Millie, it can criticize him. You can criticize Secretary of Defense worthy of criticism. However, none of these individuals are making decisions. This is about NGOs on the ground. This is about the State Department. So you've got Bagram Air Base, the equivalent of JFK. You've got Karzai International Airport, the equivalent of Teterboro. Right. Why would you ever do an exfil out of Karzai International Airport? It makes absolutely no sense. It's tactically unsound. But and then you've got all the ISIS -K. We retaliate from the murder of 13 of our bravest and we drop a bomb on a guy delivering water. He's on our payroll and we kill children on that. Then we take out Borat on a tuk tuk driving around like that wasn't even really what was happening. It's just a den of lies. And Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, all the heroes that brought us, you know, the Bergdahl deal, the Iran nuke deal. This is these. They the State Department is running all foreign policy, including what the DOD used to run. Well, that's I was going to say. I mean, I know Biden's the president, but do you blame him at all or is it everybody underneath him that, you know, maybe was giving him bad information? And again, some of these decisions, David, is Biden even involved in some of these decisions? Like, I don't even know anymore. Is he around? Is he paying attention to anything going on? Well, I mean, just from the press conferences, it was apparent he didn't know what was going on. And the great irony is that they actually were predicting that Ukraine was going to be invaded and, you know, no one believed them. So it's like you can't influence your friends. The allies don't trust you. The enemy doesn't respect you. You know, I mean, you've got Ben Rhodes is really proud of this State Department. Susan Rice loves what they're doing. But, you know, again, Americans died. And, you know, and what is the perfect culmination of the adventure in Afghanistan? Looking at your watch at Dover Air Base when bodies are coming home. I mean, nothing could you couldn't ask for a just it's it's a debacle. Yeah. And it's sad that that's that's the leader of our country there. Let's move in. You brought up the Ukraine there. So the Russia Ukraine conflict will get to Zelensky in a minute. He is as we speak in New York City right now. But so Trump's in office. We don't see many of these conflicts or any conflicts actually started under his watch. And then we have the Biden administration come in. And a year later, we have Russia invading Ukraine. Why did this happen and why? Why the timing of February of 2022? So let's go back to when we were fighting ISIS. Trump engaged and destroyed estimated some say 300 members of Wagner forces. But those were Russian nationals. We engaged. We destroyed them. What was the response from Putin? Nothing at all. So what do people in that section of the world, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, what do they respect? They respect power. They respect authority. You're not going to get any respect if you don't engage the enemy when they present themselves. I don't understand the calculus of again, I'm trying hard to figure it out. I don't get it. I don't. You know, Romania and Hungary and Poland, you're letting them unilaterally decide whether or not they want to send reinforcements into Ukraine. That's an act of war. If NATO members engage the enemy, all of NATO is engaged against the enemy. Poland doesn't unilaterally make that decision. Hungary and Romania don't unilaterally make that decision. We can't even articulate what the mission is. And if you look, go to the Institute for the Study of War, there's a plug for them. Check out their overlay from when the battle started, when the war started with Russia. And tell me what success this offensive in Ukraine has produced. I mean, let me ask this question, because I get confused. The answer is nothing. I asked this on Twitter, X, whatever it's called, all the time. What is the end game and how do we get there? Because all I see the answer is, hey, just blank checks. Hey, just write a check. Hey, here's a billion. Hey, here's 20 billion. Hey, here's another 10 billion. I don't actually see a look. I mean, like anything, right? If I write a business plan of what I want to do in 2024, my goal is X. I write down my steps to get X. I don't just write down X and say it's going to happen. I don't really know. And then the answer always is, well, we have to fight. We have to back Ukraine. Okay. But when does that end? Because the Afghanistan war and the war in Iraq lasted 20 years plus, right? And was there a real end to it? I don't know. That's where it gets frustrating for me, Dave, where I'm like, how do we know what the end game is? Do you win or lose? When does that happen? I don't know. I don't know. At least you're thinking about it. And I have fear that our leaders aren't, and that's the problem. So here's what this comes out. You're going to get a negotiated settlement out of Ukraine, right? But you talked about the billions of dollars that we're spending and giving to Ukraine as a blank check. First of all, Zelensky visited Ukrainian soldiers in the United States. Did you know that there were wounded Ukrainian soldiers in the United States? I did not know that. Well, today he visited them. So what's happening there? So that's a cost that no one is putting on the ledger. So now let's look at the blank check that Ukraine is getting. And by the way, I'm pro Ukraine. I want to fight communists all day and night. So let's punch Putin hard in the face. However, you're giving them a blank check and you're giving them munitions. Now here's the problem. We have to replace those munitions. Those munitions were purchased for 20 year global war and terror. And let's be honest, inflation is involved. So what you purchased for $10 is now $17. So you're not just giving them the money. You're giving them the equipment and the munitions that you have to replace yourself at the value of what is valued today. We haven't scratched the surface for the amount of money. CBO absent at the wheel. No one is tracking this. 2024 can't get here fast enough. How does this work, though, when you talk about some of these NATO nations coming together and making decisions, but us not just giving weaponry, giving everything money, whatever we're giving there? Is that not an act of war, too, though, David, at some point? We're continuing to fund Ukraine continuing the war in Ukraine. I mean, that to me seems like we're backing a war. Well, I mean, by the letter of the law and NATO charter, it's not. But here's the problem. It's schizophrenic because we were told that what was an offensive weapon was going to mitigate, you know, that wasn't going to help peace at all. So we went from, I don't know if they should get tracked vehicles to I'm not sure an artillery piece is what they need to high Mars rockets being launched. And let's be honest. I mean, the Ukrainians are I mean, the payload that they're going through, what you would have to have cataclysmic casualty numbers to be able to to the spandex that they're doing on the ground that they need to replace Patriot. If you're going through thirty five Patriot to, you know, missiles, I would expect to at least the C 20 makes that are shot down. They're using them for air artillery. They're using there for indirect fire. I don't know what they're doing, but this is going to end with Don Boss going to Russia. This is going to end with that land chain that Putin wanted through Crimea. And again, our friends in NATO, what are they even doing for Ukraine? What? Look, if you they said that Trump wanted to kill NATO, Biden did it. Right. Biden did it. And now Germany. And so Putin was selling oil at thirty dollars a barrel. What's it at ninety six? Yeah. He's making more money than he did before. And he's financing a war and killing innocent people. You mentioned before, too, and I think this is a good point. Everybody on the left and I'll say the media, the establishment, whoever you want to say, says that if you don't agree with the war in Ukraine, you're like pro Putin. Right. And that's just the most outrageous thing in the world, because I agree with you. I feel for the people of Ukraine. I don't want this for them. I don't want this for innocent people. However, at some point, the world's every every one of the world's problems can't be America's problem when we have a border crisis. And then I think they said yesterday ten thousand people came across. They got, I think, eight thousand of the ten thousand. But you see the numbers day over day. It's a problem. We have crime that's rampant. We have overdoses that are at record numbers. We have we have suicides at record numbers. At some point, we have to maybe just think about ourselves and not everybody else, because if we fall, sadly, I think the world falls at that point. Amen. The thing that I would add is I love the way the Ukraine refugee has been crowbarred into the migrant crisis in the United States. New York leaders from the city to all over Kathy Hochul, the governor of the state of New York, mentioning that, you know, like the Ukrainians in Poland, the the Polish have no intention to keep Ukrainians forever. That's a temporary you know, they're leaving a conflict to return to their country after the conflict is over. Again, this is just we're we're putting a round peg into a square hole and just hammering it away. But but there's no the media. There's you're our destroying military. I go to parents all the time around this country and ask them to give us their sons and daughters to join the military. And the one thing they bring up is Afghanistan. It's not about anything. It's Afghanistan. How are you going to assure us that you're going to maintain your commitment to our son and daughter when you betrayed us in Afghanistan that has lasting effects? And there's not a I'm trying to find a segment of our of our of our nation that's functioning. I don't know what it is. I saw in Chicago, they're going to have municipally owned grocery stores. Maybe that will figure it out there. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Real quick, do you think and we'll finish up on this topic, but do you think that they will we will ever have boots in the ground on Ukraine? I mean, I hope not, because I just don't know what the I mean, look at I'm I'm we're getting ready for China. We're trying to revolutionize everything. I don't know what the what the plan is. I mean, again, if you want to put a base in Ukraine, and you want to make that a sustainment operation going forward, that I here's the point. I don't understand what the inactive ready reserve call up was for. Why are you bringing those troops in the non combat support? Why are they going to Ukraine? What are you building infrastructure there? Here's what I do know. We're talking a minimum of $11 trillion to build Ukraine back. That is cataclysmic amounts of money. There isn't water, electricity, internet, you know, you want to help Ukraine. You're going to Russia is not paying for that if you negotiate a settlement. So I don't know what the plan is. But I hope we never see boots on the ground. I could guess what the plan is. I won't I won't say for sure. But I could guess that we'll be paying a chunk of that. And I do have one last one. So I did interview Colonel Douglas McGregor a few months back. And he talked about he's a real optimist. But he is really very, very bullish on Ukraine. Yes, very, very optimistic. I'm dropping some all over the place. But he brought up some staggering numbers, though. And even if they're half true, it's a problem. The amount of casualties and wounded soldiers on the Ukrainian side that we're not hearing about the media. I don't know if you agree with some of those numbers or not. But he's saying, I mean, it's people are acting as if this is an even war right now. And it's not even close. First of all, McGregor's a stud. I mean, he's an absolute, you know, that we're glad he's on our side. He's a military mind. I don't know if those numbers are accurate. I could tell you they're juxtaposed to almost everything we're hearing from every institution that we have, including a lot of our intel from Germany and England. But again, I don't know what to believe. So when you don't have when you don't have transparency, when you're not holding regular press conferences, when your Pentagon spokesman is now working in the White House and now you're getting a triple spin. I mean, the U .S. Open double backspin. You've gotten so many spins on the narrative. I don't know what to believe. But if he is even close to what is a segment of truth, you know, then look, Ukraine needs an investigation. There's a lot of investigations. We've got to start on Afghanistan. We were promised that by Speaker McCarthy. We need a hot wash on Afghanistan. And then we need to go to what who is oversighting the money that's going to Ukraine. And what have we got for our return on investment? Yeah, I'm not asking for much. Really, all I'm asking for in this conflict is can we just talk about what the end game is? And to your point, can we get an accounting of where the money's going and what's being spent in a real accounting of it? The Iran deal that just happened last week. First off, the fact that that was negotiated and completed on 11th September to me is just the ultimate slap in the face. But you again, you know more about this than I do. We do a five for five trade. OK, I'm going to use sports analogies. We trade five for five. And then we also approved of six billion dollars that apparently wasn't ours, but it was in a fund that now they can release to Iran. How are we winning on that one? Well, first of all, I was hoping that at least it was a digital transfer. The fact that it went as euros in cash through Qatar. And OK, so what happens the 24 hours after that deal is made? We're now getting issues in the West Bank. We're now hearing about issues in Yemen. We've now got Hezbollah that's reinforced. I mean, look, what do you think they're doing with cash? Right. What deal do you make where someone says, I'll bring a box of money to you? What do you it's this is a state sponsor of terrorism. They haven't changed. By the way, their president is now in New York City addressing the United Nations. This guy's killed 6500 of his own people. He admits to it. He killed the students that revolted and wanted democracy when we did nothing. He killed 5000 of his citizens in 1988. He's killed over 300 Americans. There's no accountability whatsoever. I don't understand what it is about Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken that believe that Iran is a partner. All you've done 10 years ago, they were refining 10 percent of their oil. And now they're a force. Now they're working with Maduro in Venezuela, and they're a huge part of their members of of the international community. They're in good standing there. I don't get it. Does anyone believe that the Iran nuke deal? Look, we got hit with cruise missiles under Trump in Iraq. How did they have those cruise missiles? Those cruise missiles were illegal under the Obama nuke deal. So how are you refurbishing missiles in two years? Do we believe that their centrifuges have stopped? That they won't have a program if they don't have one already? No, I mean, I guess my question, David, is how I mean, I know that you pay a lot of attention to this stuff, but how do people like in the media not ask these questions? Right. I mean, these are legitimate. I mean, we just traded to I put this on my notes here. This is on the heels of trading a WNBA basketball player for the Merchant of Death like six months ago. Right. I mean, and again, I'm glad Americans are coming back to America. I don't want to sound pessimistic on that. That's great news. But we also I mean, this this stuff just seems like I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. It warrants questions, but nobody seems to care. I'm in the world that if you take hostages, we take hostages. You want to exchange people? We'll exchange people. You know, we definitely have the partners in the area to do that. For whatever reason, this administration, they're they're they're contrarians. They're contrarians to you know, they claim Bush and Cheney are their best friends, yet they just go 180 degrees from that doctrine. I don't know what the Biden doctrine is. I don't know what Bidenonomics is either, but I could tell you that they believe that Iran is a partner. Now, here's another thing. Our envoy to Iran not only is no longer the envoy, he doesn't have a security clearance. Does anyone curious at The New York Times as to what happened to the lead negotiator in Iran that is escorted off a bus, taken into American custody, given a job at Yale or Princeton or wherever he's working now? I've never heard of a person going from top secret classified negotiations to no clearance whatsoever and in the custody of American intelligence community. No one cares. No one cares at all. It's fascinating. And again, for me, I mean, these are big decisions that we're making. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it used to be, you know, maybe we did a two for five deal and then we made the six billion. Now we're like, we're giving stuff away and we're on the losing end. Correct me if I'm wrong, but America was never, you know, America losing. It was always America winning, right? America getting the best of deals. At least McDonald's has a five for five. We didn't even get that. You know what this does though? Honest to God, if you're thinking about traveling overseas, things go sideways, cartel, South America, Mexico, wherever you're going, you have a price in your head now. No one in their right mind is going to bring you back whether it's Haiti or wherever you are, you're worth $1 .25 billion. And thugs and scumbags are going to take advantage of that. I mean, that's a great point too. Do you think about leaving the country? I don't know anymore. That's a little bit concerning. I don't care where you're going, right? That's concerning. This one I just had to bring up because it happened two days ago or yesterday. How do we lose a plane? And I heard that's like a third one in the last six weeks that something like this has happened. How are we losing $80 million planes? Well, they're not $80 million anymore because they've got a new engine and all this other stuff. Look, the F -35 program is a complete disaster. You want to talk about why our allies think we're crazy. We sold them a plane. This program has been around since the early 90s and we've got nothing on return for it. So basically two planes are flying in a buddy team. They're doing training and a guy punches out. We don't even know why he punched out, but that plane could have easily hit a building. It didn't, thank God. But the wingman didn't follow where his buddy went. So what is he doing? He just kind of went on and did his own thing. And now the Marine Corps put a Facebook post like a dog is missing. We're expecting the Ukrainian farmers to carry the F -35 out with their tractors. I don't know what the point of it's wild. Look, stop embarrassing us. Just stop humiliating us. That's all I'm asking. Just be the army and the Marine Corps that we know our men and women are capable of being. Get out of their way. This gender garbage, this social experiment nonsense, stop humiliating our military. That's all I ask. Why can we not get the... I mean, I know why we can't get the answer, but I'm asking this to you. But why can't we, at a press conference at the White House, why can't we say, I want to talk to the guy that was in the other plane, or you can tell us the transcript of what happened when that happened. Talk to the guy who jumped out of the plane. Why did you do that? And again, I'm not trying to put our military on the spot, but these are kind of big questions to ask, right? I mean, if I do something in my business, I have to go face the music on that. Why doesn't everybody have to face music for their decisions or why things are happening? I think it's kind of important. Well, you don't want to talk to generals because they're going to tell you the truth and they won't be generals anymore. True. And you don't want to talk to enlisted people. Because look, I mean, let's be honest. How many people are... Is this a merit -based military anymore? Do we have a meritocracy? Are we promoting people based on pronouns? Go figure. When we're putting politics above military strength, accidents happen. We don't know the facts, but the fact that nobody cares about getting to the bottom of it, the day of the Pentagon paper reporters are gone. Yep. Yep. Let's just talk about the 2024 race quick, and then we will wrap up for today. So your thoughts on the Republican primary so far, I'll stay away from the Democratic side till the very end, but your thoughts on, you know, there's obviously Trump who is now in a, has a huge lead. Ron DeSantis seems to be crumbling underneath himself. Vivek Ramaswamy has jumped up in the polls. Nikki Haley's there. Tim Scott's there. A few others that probably aren't going to get a lot of votes. Chris Christie's the anti -Trump candidate. Mike Pence is, I don't know what Mike Pence is. I'm not really sure. Your thoughts about the whole field so far? I mean, look, it's impressive. They've got a deep bench. There's a lot of diversity. I, you know, none of it matters. Trump is the guy. The more you indict him, the more you empower him. You know, I'd like him to work on his communications a little bit better. You know, but if Trump is Trump, Trump is a Frankenstein monster of Barack Obama. As long as you have that faction, you're going to get, you know, Trump is going to be empowered. I just don't want to see Governor Noem anywhere near the White House. And I, if he's going to pick a running mate, you know, it's hard to find an ally here, you know. But it would be nice to find a governor. I don't want to take anyone from the Senate. I don't want to take anyone from the House with the margins that tight. But I mean, the idea that Governor Noem is being floated right now. I mean, I'd rather take North Dakota. Yeah. A little sled there. You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I saw a lot of that this weekend. I mean, can we just, for lack of a better term, keep it in our pants for about a year and then do what you got to do? It really is. I mean, every time you turn, somebody's doing something idiotic, whether it's Boebert. And again, I say this, David, a lot of people know who you are. A lot more know who you are than they'll ever know who I am. But when you go out in public into a movie theater like that, and I'm going to Boebert, not Noem for a second, you're, you're extremely well known. I don't care if it's dark or if it's as light as it is in the studio right now. What are you thinking? I, you know, she's, she's, she's an embarrassment. She is. She's bad, too. Who would have thought that Marjorie Taylor Greene would have been the, the oasis of the Maryland? I mean, seriously, I, again, you're, you're in Congress every day. You're out in public, you're on the job. You know, at least she wasn't wearing a hoodie, you know, that's all in shorts. She was at least dressed for the occasion, but I, it was, it's wildly embarrassing. Vaping, singing, whatever you're doing. Getting groped. Yes. Who is your VP candidate then? Because I think, you know, you have names thrown around. There's, there's, the vague has been thrown around in there. You know, Byron Donald's has been thrown around in there. Carrie Lake has. I don't know. I love Carrie Lake. I just don't know that Trump needs to go with somebody so divisive there. I think he's got to go with somebody that's, that's firm in their beliefs, but also not maybe going to turn off half the country. Well, you know, it's, it's impossible. One of the, one of the problems with making Trump, you know, the, the enemy of the state that the left has done is that you've really made it difficult for him to even put a cabinet together. You know, I mean, what are you going to do with it? You've got a lot of loyalists out there. You know, the vague is, is I think maybe the most intelligent dynamic candidate we've ever seen run for president, but experience does matter. But you know, I love the way he thinks. I love the movement. I don't know if he would even take the job to be honest with it. I don't think he needs it. But you look at a Tim Scott, I think Tim Scott is, you know, there's a whole lot to his message and I think he's, he's got the experience in the Senate, but honestly, you could literally take the Clint Eastwood chair and, and throw it in there as vice president. I'm going with that because this, this from top to bottom, we have to have seismic change in 24. Do you think he would ever choose Kristi Noem at this point with all that now? Yeah, no one knew Mike Pence was a, was a 24 hour story and then he was the vice president candidate. So who knows? I mean, a lot can happen between now and then, but I just, I don't need, you know, let's just pick people on their merit. Let's pick people that are ready to be the president. Imagine this, imagine picking a vice president that can lead the country. If something happens to a 75 year old president, you know, like Kamala Harris. Yeah. Someone like that.
Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition
A highlight from Advanced Nutrition Strategies for Inflammation and Insulin Resistance
"Hello, and welcome to the Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast, the show designed to give you science -based solutions to improve your health and life. I'm Dr. David Jockers, doctor of natural medicine and creator of DrJockers .com, and I'm the host of this podcast. I'm here to tell you that your body was created to heal itself, and on this show, we focus on strategies you can apply today to heal and function at your best. Thanks for spending time with me, and let's go into the show. If you're struggling with stiff or aching joints, and you're tired of letting the cis -comfort steal the joy and freedom from your life, then I have a natural solution you're going to love. It's called Joint Support by Pure Health Research, and this stuff is amazing. It contains seven of Mother Nature's best superfoods for supporting comfortable, healthy, and flexible joints. It even promotes healthy cartilage growth, too. All it takes is one small capsule of joint support every day to start feeling the positive effects on your health. As a listener of our show, you can try Joint Support risk -free today and get a free 30 -day supply of Omega -3 when you take advantage of this special offer. It can promote healthy joint lubrication, making it easier to move in comfort. You're also getting two free e -books, so you can learn more about joint health. Just head over to getjointhelp .com forward slash jockers. That's G -E -T -J -O -I -N -T -H -E -L -P dot com forward slash J -O -C -K -E -R -S getjointhelp .com forward slash jockers to order Joint Support and claim your free bottle of Omega -3 while supplies last. Again, that's getjointhelp .com forward slash jockers. Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I'm being interviewed by Dr. Beverly Yates for her upcoming Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Summit. We talk all about the best advanced nutrition strategies to reduce inflammation and improve insulin sensitivity. There's a lot of things you can do if you are looking to lose weight, if you're looking to improve your blood sugar sensitivity. We know insulin resistance is at the root of all chronic inflammatory conditions, but there's a lot we can do from a nutrition perspective. We go through that in this interview. I talk a lot about intermittent fasting and how that helps improve mitochondrial function, helps improve blood sugar stability and turn on fat burning. We talk about how to improve your stomach acid, bile flow, pancreatic enzymes, so you can reduce the amount of endotoxins that are released from your gut and into your bloodstream that drive up inflammatory activity in your body. So this is a really powerful presentation showing you exactly what you need to do to stabilize your blood sugar, to burn fat for fuel and reduce inflammation. If you know anybody that's dealing with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, perhaps they're overweight looking to lose weight or they're obese, please share this episode with them. And you can also check out the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit that Dr. Yates is putting on. Just go to the show notes for this episode on DrJockers .com and there will be a link there where you can register for free for the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit and listen to all the great interviews with top experts when it comes to blood sugar stability and type 2 diabetes. And if you have not left us a five -star review for this podcast, please do that now. When you leave us a review, it helps us reach more people and impact more lives with this message. It's really easy to do. Just go to Apple iTunes or wherever you listen to the podcast, scroll to the bottom, usually the review areas at the bottom and leave us a five -star review, leave a comment in there. That means so much to us and helps us reach more people. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for being a part of our community and let's go into the show. Hey everyone, welcome to the Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Beverly Yates, MD. It's my distinct privilege and honor to interview a wonderful colleague of mine, Dr. David Jockers. He's been a leader in many aspects of health and continues to help people have clarity about their health. One of the things that's so interesting as we do all the episodes here for the summit is I'm trying very consciously to give people different points of view and different aspects of what it takes for blood sugar success to be well. So with Dr. David Jockers, we're going to introduce him in just a moment here. He's a doctor of natural medicine and runs one of the most popular natural health websites online in drjockers .com and has gotten over a million views for monthly visitors and his work is really popular. It's been seen on shows like The Dr. Oz Show and Hallmark Home and Family. He's the author of the best -selling book, The Keto -Metabolic Breakthrough and also The Fasting Transformation. He's a world -renowned expert in the area of ketosis, fasting, brain health, inflammation and functional nutrition. He also hosts his popular Dr. Jockers Functional Nutrition podcast. Be sure to look up his work, check out what that he's offering. Dr. Jockers, welcome to our summit. Thanks so much, Dr. Beverly. Great to be on with you. Yeah. You know, I've really been excited for our talk because I think that there are so many ways in which people can eat and nourish themselves and some things are certainly more helpful or successful when it comes to blood sugar control and glycemic regulations than others. So with that in mind, let's dig in right away here. So please, if you would share with us your perspective here, what is inflammation and how does it develop? Yeah. Inflammation is just a natural process of healing. In fact, it's actually designed to help protect our body from some sort of chronic systemic infection and so, well, not chronic infection, but some sort of systemic acute infection from killing us quickly. And so I think we look at the history of mankind. More people have died from infections that got into our bloodstreams, bloodstreams spread throughout our body, went into major vital organs and killed us is what used to kill most of our ancestors. And so our body has created this inflammatory process to help protect against that. So the infection that gets in doesn't get into our lungs and cause pneumonia or our nervous system and cause meningitis. And so in order to do that, we created this inflammatory process to keep basically infection under control. And it's also part of the healing process. We break down damaged tissue and we try to remove that in order to build new healthy tissue. So for example, if we sprain our ankle, we're going to break down that tissue and try to rebuild new healthy tissue in that area. So inflammation itself is life saving. The issue is that it should be turned off when the appropriate area is healed. And so in our society, we have certain vectors that are turning up inflammation. For example, one is called leaky gut, right? So when somebody has leaky gut, there's damage, micro damage to the intestinal lining. And every time that person's eating food, particularly food that causes more gut irritation, they are further tearing that gut lining and they're not really allowing their body to heal properly. And therefore, they're spewing out bacteria and endotoxins into their bloodstream through that lining, through that hole. And that's driving up inflammation in the body because the body thinks that it's under attack from some sort of systemic infection or some sort of basically infectious process that could be life threatening. And so we've got to do what we can to get inflammation under control in our society. And so I think about it like a fire in a fireplace. You know, if the fire is on in the fireplace, it's great. It warms the house. You know, it creates a great environment, an ambiance. However, when we dump gasoline on the fire, right now it spreads on the walls and starts to burn our home. And obviously that's when it's a major issue. And so in our society, we have lifestyle habits that are dumping gasoline on the fire and causing us to burn up our home. And we just don't really understand it. We don't realize that's actually what we're doing to our body. And then we later, you know, after doing this for years and years and years, we get diagnosed with the chronic disease. But this is many years of chronic inflammation, damaging cells, tissues and organ systems of our body leading to, you know, that disease diagnosis. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for laying that out so clearly. You know, it's so interesting in clinical work, sometimes it comes up. People are like, this just happened to me overnight, thinking that their body has attacked them or betrayed them and that their diagnosis has come on all of a sudden when in reality, nope, this was years in the making. So thank you so much for pointing that out for us. So anyone listening to this, if you have an inflammatory problem, please know. It took time for it to develop and it will take some time for it to heal. The good news is, if healing is possible, that it's likely to be a lot faster compared to the silent onset process. It's like too bad. It would be great if our body, as we get more and more inflamed, gave us a sound or a noise or maybe we turned polka dotted or something so we can know that something's going on here, you know? Yeah, for sure. And many times people do have chronic symptoms that are giving them a warning sign. And we just ignore it in our society, right? It's kind of like a check engine light goes on in our car. Typically we know, okay, I need to bring this in and get it looked at. But in our society, if we have headaches, chronic headaches, if we have chronic gut pain, if we have chronic joint pain, if we have skin rashes, acne, eczema, if we are gaining weight and we try some lifestyle strategies and we're just not losing weight, if we're gaining weight and we can go on and on, in our society, oftentimes the first thing we do is we go right to some sort of medication or we try to just ignore it. It's like we just let the check engine light stay on or we take some duct tape and just kind of stick it over it and pretend that everything's okay with the car. And that's really what we're doing. We're not actually getting to the root cause. Exactly. So that brings me to my very next question for you, which is this. What are some of the root causes of inflammation and how can this be measured quantitatively with lab testing? So when we look at root causes of chronic inflammation, one, and this is what you're really addressing in this summit, is a diet and lifestyle that is not right, right? So high blood sugar and insulin resistance, primarily driven by the food that we're consuming and lack of exercise, right? Lack of movement, food that we're consuming, obviously stress plays a role. So high stress, poor sleep hygiene and poor sleep quality. Sleep quality is super important. We've got to make sure we're sleeping really well when we are sleeping, but also proper hygiene when it comes to sleep. That plays a big role with our sleep quality. For example, shift workers, they might sleep eight or nine hours, but because they're sleeping at the wrong hours that are not right with, you know, humans, natural circadian rhythm or we're supposed to be sleeping at night, they tend to have higher levels of blood sugar and insulin resistance compared to people that are sleeping the same amount of hours and working kind of a normal shift and then sleeping overnight. So those are major factors. And then beyond that, we have things like chronic infections. So we know that when we have different infections, whether it's a candida overgrowth in our gut, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, H. pylori infections in our stomach, parasite infections, Lyme disease, things like that, that all drives up inflammatory processes in our body. Chronic overload of toxicity. All of us are exposed to chemicals in our air, water and food. So all of us have levels of toxicity coming into our system. But if our drainage and detoxification pathways are working properly, we should be eliminating a good amount of those and keeping our toxic bucket under control. And so we all have kind of like a toxic threshold. And so if we keep things under that threshold by keeping, you know, by limiting our exposure to toxins and then by allowing our body to detox and drain effectively, then, you know, that doesn't drive inflammation. However, if we're consuming lots of toxins from the food, we eat the air, we breathe the things we're putting on our skin, the water we're drinking, and then we're not doing things to help improve our lymphatic system, our liver, our gut, our kidneys. Right. We're not we're not peeing. You know, we should be urinating. Right. We should be peeing out toxins. We should be breathing them out. So respiration, perspiration, that's sweating, urination and defecation. Right. So we should be peeing, pooping, breathing. And sweating out these toxins. If we're not doing that, then our toxic load goes up, goes over that threshold, drives inflammation in the body. So toxicity is a big factor. You know, I mentioned stress. There can also be things like post -traumatic stress disorders. Right. So where somebody's had major trauma and their body never really recovered from that trauma and they're kind of reliving that trauma. Maybe somebody that was a war veteran or perhaps they were sexually abused or something along those lines. Right. They may relive those traumas on a regular basis, driving up inflammation in the body. So all of these things need to be addressed and and considered. Somebody might be living in a mold toxic house, right, breathing in mold and mycotoxins on a daily basis. They're trying to live a healthy lifestyle, but they're constantly overloading their their system with toxins. And so we've got to be able to look at all of those factors and make sure that we're addressing those to keep inflammation under control. Now, when we're measuring inflammation on labs, there's some easy labs that we can look at. You know, you can get done on blood work. For example, one of the most common is high sensitivity C reactive protein. CRP is a protein that our body, our immune system produces in response to inflammation. And, you know, so long as you don't get a false negative, like if you work out really intensely right before you get your blood test done, your CRP will be through the roof. That's actually a healthy level of inflammation, because after we exercise, we have inflammation to help our body heal and recover. So normally you want to not work out roughly 48 hours before getting the test done, ideally at least 24 hours. So you get the right measurement and your HSCRP should ideally be under one and really as close to zero as possible. And so typically it's not flag tie unless it's up over two or three, somewhere in that range. But anything over one is a sign that there's underlying inflammation there. And that's something that we definitely want to look at and address. So that's a big factor. You know, I know in this in this summit, I'm sure you've got people talking about things like hemoglobin A1C. We know hemoglobin A1C, that's a sign of the glycation process or basically when a sugar molecule binds to a major protein, like in this case, when it binds to hemoglobin, major protein that helps bring oxygen to the cells in the body and denatures the hemoglobin. And so it causes a sticky protein process. So we should have ideally like the optimal range really is is really under under 5 .2 on the hemoglobin, 5 .2 percent under. And so typically in our society, nothing is flagged until it's up over six, up over six percent. I like to keep mine under five, right? Between four point five and five. Some are in that range to make sure that my hemoglobin, my red blood cells have great capacity to bring oxygen to the cells so I can create the cellular energy I need to really thrive. So hemoglobin A1C is a really good marker. There's another one actually that you can test, too. It's it's it's called a novel marker for systemic inflammation. It's called GlycA, right? And so it's also a marker of glycosylation and again, a sugar molecule binding to proteins. In this case, GlycA looks at proteins particularly involved in the immune system. And so when that's elevated, I like to see it between one hundred and three hundred. Some are in that range, more closer to one hundred when it's up over three hundred. We know that's a sign of systemic inflammation. In fact, there are some individuals that will have normal HSCRP, but we'll see the GlycA elevated. And so that's a really good it's a novel marker. They've just been doing a number of studies on that, really starting just in the last five years. Very interesting marker. We know, for example, statin drugs will have a cholesterol lowering medications can have a mild anti -inflammatory effect that may bring CRP down, but they don't bring GlycA down. Whereas a lot of lifestyle strategies that you're talking about on the summit will help bring both of those markers down. And so that's a that's a really important thing to be looking at. Another key marker is LDH, lactate dehydrogenase, which is part of our natural energy, you know, our glycolysis and Krebs cycle. It's kind of a Krebs cycle glycolysis intermediary enzyme. And so when that's elevated, it's a sign that there's inflammation, particularly heart tissue related as well as liver. Right. Could be related to liver. And speaking of liver, liver enzymes are another really good marker. So when we're seeing liver enzymes like ALT, AST, GGT, when these when these are elevated up over roughly up over 25, that's a sign that there's inflammation affecting the liver cells. And then based on the ratios, for example, if ALT is real high, AST is kind of in the normal range, roughly 10 to 25 in that normal range. We know that inflammation is really affecting the liver when AST is high and ALT is more in the normal range or a lot lower than AST. We start thinking about that inflammation affecting muscle tissues or affecting the heart in particular. So that's a key marker for that. When GGT is real high up over 25 again and the AST and ALT are lower than the GGT, then we start thinking about biliary tree, gallbladder, bile ducts, that region. So it kind of helps us understand more of where that inflammation may be located. So these are just some of the markers. You know, if you get a good a good look, you know, you can also look at just a lipid panel, like where you're looking at your LDL, which is considered the bad cholesterol, your triglycerides, your HDL levels. We like to see the triglyceride to HDL ratio. If there was one thing I was going to look at on a lipid panel, I think all the markers can have some importance. We can get some good clinical data from all those markers. But if there was one marker I think is most important to look at, it would be the triglyceride to HDL ratio. So how many triglycerides, which are basically free fatty acids that our body can use as an energy source that are circulating in the bloodstream versus the high density lipoproteins, which are a carrier molecule that helps bring fats, lipids, all different types of molecules back to the liver from the cells. And so when we're looking at that ratio, we ideally should be under two. So under two parts triglyceride to HDL, roughly close to one. And that kind of close, as close to one as possible, one part triglyceride, one part HDL, like to see that triglyceride level certainly under a hundred. OK, and we look at that. That is a key marker for insulin resistance and inflammation. If your triglyceride to HDL ratio is up over two, if your HDL is under 50, you know, triglycerides are up over a hundred. You know, definitely a sign of insulin resistance and inflammation taking place in the body as long as the test is done fasting. Right. We always want to make sure with the lipid panel definitely can be affected if we eat a meal right before we we get that lab done. But that's a really key marker to look at and helps us understand how well our body's responding to getting nutrients into the cells. So when triglycerides are real high, we're not good at burning fat for fuel. We've got all these extra fats out in the cell or outside in the bloodstream. And those fats can become denatured and cause more reactive oxygen species and drive up oxidative stress and inflammation in the system. So all very important markers to be looking at. A lot of these tests are not expensive, but glyca is a little bit more pricey. But most of the other ones you can easily get from your physician. Just go in, ask for the high sensitivity, high sensitivity to your reactive protein, lipid panel, liver enzymes. Right. They'll run all of those. And then one other marker that we should look at as well as vitamin D levels are 25 hydroxy vitamin D. A lot of research out showing that levels on certainly under 30 nanograms per milliliter, where you're you're the lab will actually flag you as deficient, you know, linked with all cause mortality. So if you have levels under 30, you're all cause mortality, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative condition. We talk about any sort of chronic disease and then dying of anything goes up. Right. So it's really easy actually to bump that up. Ideally, we do it by getting in the sun. However, most of us just not getting enough sunshine. We may not be living in an area where the sun's going to impact us in a significant way to get the vitamin D if we're up. Let's say we live in Canada, we live in Maine, we live in these northern climates. It's going to be harder to get enough vitamin D from the sun. But if we are in a you know, even if we are in that location, like in the summer months, trying to get as much sun on as much of your body as possible. Obviously, you don't want to burn. But outside of that, trying to get the sunshine is key. Sun offers a lot more benefits than just a vitamin D supplement. However, taking a vitamin D supplement as well can be really helpful. I usually recommend about a thousand international units per twenty five pounds of body weight taken with meals you do at one or two doses, depending on how much of that you need. And that will definitely get your vitamin D levels up. You want to test every three to six months or so and kind of look at where you're at. Ideally, I like to see it up over 60 nanograms per milliliter, usually not concerned about overdosing. The research shows that as long as you keep it really under about 150 nanograms per milliliter, you won't deal with any sort of, you know, toxicity, vitamin D toxicity. It's really hard to get it up over 150, although it can be done if you're taking like 50 ,000 units every single day. So if you're taking roughly five, 10, 15 ,000 units every day, you're probably going to optimize your vitamin D and do really well. And so those would be some of the key labs I would definitely recommend. All right, great, thank you for that list of people listening, friends, you know, here in the audience, please do take out your notes, get your paper and pen ready, or if you're keeping a Google doc or however you're keeping track and look at this list because it'll be helpful to you to help guide your own health and be aware. And you may find you're already working with a doctor who's doing these kind of testing. It's not time to time to up level. Hey, I just wanted to interrupt this podcast to tell you about my cell liposomal glutathione. This is an amazing product because our modern world is toxic. No matter how health conscious you try to be. The truth is that every single day you and I are being bombarded by harmful toxins and stressors, things like EMF, 5G, heavy metals, chemicals, processed foods and the like. And when left to roam free, these toxins take on the form of something called free radicals. Free radicals promote an unhealthy inflammatory response and contribute to oxidative on damage the cellular level. This is kind of like the browning of an apple. This is happening inside of our bodies at all times, and it's potentially leading to premature aging, a lower quality of life and a range of health problems. But the good news is that we can fight back with antioxidants and they are crucial in combating free radicals and keeping you on track. And one of the most powerful antioxidants known to man is glutathione. You see, glutathione fights free radicals and molecules that cause cellular damage while repairing the DNA and flushing out toxins. The only thing about glutathione is that not all supplements are created equal. You want a kind of glutathione that has optimal absorption capacity. And that is why I love the Pureality Health My Cell Liposomal Technology, which delivers the nutrients into your bloodstream. And it's proven to be 800 percent more efficient than other forms of glutathione. And even better, this is backed by a 180 day money back guarantee. And today we have a 30 percent off coupon for you. Just visit PurealityHealth .com and use the coupon DRJ to access 30 percent off today. That's Pureality Health. That's P -U -R -A -L -I -T -Y H -E -A -L -T -H dot com and use the coupon code DRJ to access 30 percent off today.
Addiction Unlimited Podcast | Alcoholism | 12 Steps | Living Sober | Addiction Treatment
A highlight from A Sober Journey to Becoming an Author
"You know, I had maybe 100 or 150 failed attempts behind me, you know, of me saying, that's it, no more. I'm not doing it today. I honestly can't say what the difference was that one time, but that one time I was well and truly freaking done. And I just said to my wife, I have to get help. It's out of control. I can't control it. And it was terrifying. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast, where you get to learn everything you want to know about addiction and recovery. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, co -founder of Kansas City Recovery, Life Coach, and Recovering Alcoholics. To learn more about me, you can listen to episode zero on your podcast app or find us on the web at addictionunlimited .com. Hi, Will. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this show with me. It's so good to see you. Hey, Angela. Good to see you too. Take a couple of minutes and tell everybody a little bit about you and what you do. Thank you. So my name is Will Thacher, and I'm an author of addiction fiction novels. I'm also an addiction fiction nerd and fan. And that's my little world. I'm a sober guy and I love these stories. I'm a big lifelong avid reader. And I just sort of found this space, which there's really not that much in it. There are a handful of authors that have done some great work and I'm passionate about it. And so that's how I'm doing it. There are so many typical books that you get in the recovery space, right? It's not self -help based. It's not personal story based. It's not a memoir or a how -to or a guide, right? This is really reading for enjoyment. Totally. Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, there are so many good books that are in the categories that you just listed. And there are new ones out every year and it's very well represented. Personally, I love fiction. It's something that I grew up with. I always had a book in my hands. And from my perspective, it's 90 % enjoyment. And there is a 10 % value in terms of relating this to my recovery, reading about people who are going through the same types of things, albeit in much more extreme circumstances in my books, relating that back to my own recovery. When we watch a movie, for example, that has characters in recovery or in active addiction, I have a very direct emotional reaction to that because I've lived through that pain. And I won't quite call it a spiritual experience, but certainly I'll have an emotional experience, a connection to those characters. So I do think that there is some little residual benefit to my recovery when I read these books. Yeah, I would agree with that for sure. And I think the audience can relate to this also in that recovery can be heavy work. Especially in the beginning, it takes so much of you and your time and your energy and it can start to feel very overwhelming. So to not constantly be immersed in the self -help, the personal development, sobriety, recovery, change your life, get your act together, to have something that has some pieces of that in the familiarity of recovery and recovery language, but to have it be just for enjoyment, I think is so powerful. And I'm really excited to watch this category grow. It's nice to hear you say that. And I personally agree with that entirely. This is deadly serious stuff, literally. But also, I'm a big AA guy and we always say there has to be some fun in it or else people aren't going to want it. And so I think that this is a way to keep a foot in the work, keep the themes and the ideas that you're trying to bring into your mind, trying to bring into your life and take a little bit of a break from the hardcore recovery aspect of it. I think it's worth mentioning that a lot of what I write is definitely not so much for people in their first three or six months of recovery. There are much better things that those people should be reading than fiction. Frankly, their lives are at stake. My work is really much more for people who have a little bit of sobriety under their belts, they're living a sober life and they want to relate to and hear stories about sober characters that are out there. I'm getting ready to publish my second novel now. And what I write about is what's interesting to me. What's going on in my life and in my head, which are next step sober problems. Okay, you got sober, your life got good, then what? Because that's what I'm interested in at this point. And that's what a lot of my characters go through. Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. And it reminds me of when I was new, I'm a 12 step person also. And I remember when I was really new sitting in those rooms and for several months, right? Not understanding a lot of the lingo and like the one liners. And now I love those things, right? Because I've been in it for a hundred years and it all makes sense to me. And it's this beautiful sort of shorthand, like you can pop out this one liner and it has so much profound meaning. Once you get it, it simplifies things. But when I was new sitting in there, I was like, what the hell are these people talking about? I just didn't understand those things. So I appreciate you pointing that out, that there is some depth of knowledge, but I think it can also bring some really great familiarity to the recovery world and some of that terminology and what it means. So I think it could go both ways, but you definitely want to have some basic understanding of a sober life. Yeah. I mean, that's why everybody recommends what they recommend to the newcomer, right? 90 and 90, there's an immersion that should happen in the beginning so that to your point, you start to speak the language and you start to think in those terms. And then from that point on, yes, you don't have to necessarily go to a meeting or two or three a day like I did from my first three to six months in sobriety. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk a little bit about your personal journey. What was it for you? At what point did you recognize that you really had a problem? I mean, I knew I had a problem for a good year or two before the rest of the world was rudely introduced to it. My problem came to light to ring a family vacation. I've actually heard a couple of other people tell versions of this story in the rooms, which was gratifying to me. I had spent the last really year, year and a half of my using and drinking in isolation, and I had gotten very good at hiding away from my family and from friends and doing my thing, doing at that time what I thought of as whatever I had to do to get through the day, surviving in this head of mine. And then we booked a vacation. I went away with not just my direct family, but my extended family for two weeks, and there was no hiding. There was no sitting in my office behind two closed doors, and it was unmanageable. And so I ran around for the first half of it, trying to keep a buzz going, trying to figure out a way to do this. And it just became clear that not just to me, but to everybody else, that this was a real problem and it needed to be addressed. And it was really humiliating to have that happen in such a public way, but probably the best thing that could have happened. What did you do when you really understood, okay, this has to stop, right? We get to that, what I call what everybody refers to as that sort of rock bottom moment. And just to clarify, because there is a misconception about rock bottom, rock bottom doesn't have to be a huge extravagant event. Rock bottom is just the very moment you hit in your head that you're like, oh my gosh, I cannot live like this anymore. Something has to change. So you have that epiphany. What was your next thought and next action to get started in making the change? Well, I had maybe 100 or 150 failed attempts behind me of me saying, that's it, no more. I'm not doing it today. I honestly can't say what the difference was that one time, but that one time I was well and truly freaking done. And I just said to my wife, I have to get help. It's out of control. I can't control it. It's totally out of my hands. Whatever happens, happens. And it was terrifying. So we came home from the vacation and my plan was to get myself into a rehab, go spend 28 days somewhere and let them tell me what to do. But in the meantime, I decided to hit a couple of AA meetings while I got that all sorted out. I have a good close cousin who's in recovery, who's a huge AA proponent. I actually have two cousins, both of whom I adore and whose lives are incredible because of recovery. And they always talk about AA. I guess they talked about it in front of me for a reason. We call that planting seed. I think that's right. So I went to AA. I sat down in a meeting and I heard my first couple of sober stories and I was hooked. I tell people that's what got me sober was the stories that I heard before there was fellowship, before there were steps, before there was service, any of the other key aspects of recovery. Before I even knew what those things were, I heard those stories. I read myself into every one of them, even if the circumstances were totally different from mine. I loved the arc of the qualification, what happened, how it is, how it is now. Just people amazing being incredibly honest. And I really thought, okay, if they can do this, I can do this. They sound just like me. They're literally saying the things that are inside my head. So I must be in the right place. I'm not a stupid person. I can connect those two things. I think I can do this. So I held off on the rehab thing because I thought I could, the great and powerful me, could sort this out on my own. But I did AA immersion, like two or three meetings a day. My work was in the garbage at that point. It turned out to be a blessing in some ways. And so I was doing two or three meetings every day and following guys around and that was how I got sober. Hearing you say all of that just again takes me back to my early days and so much the same experience. And I know a ton of people listening right now are nodding their heads in agreement, where you sit and you hear the other people share. And this isn't a 12 step specific thing. People say the same thing in my online community, and I'm sure they have the same experience in other people's online communities. But you hear people share their stories and you hear your story just with their details. And it's a really powerful experience when you can sit back and go, oh wow, I'm not the only one. Because I think in active addiction, it's so isolating. Even if you're not isolated physically, even if you're going out and drinking with people and you're not isolating in that way, mentally and emotionally, psychologically, it's so isolating because you feel so different from everyone else. I know for sure I felt like I was the biggest piece of garbage on the planet. I was disgusting. I thought my drinking was worse than everybody's, right? Because in my immediate friend group, I was probably the worst, you know? And then I got to the rooms and I hear other people talking and sharing those stories. And I was like, oh wow, okay. I'm not so isolated. I'm not on this one man island all by myself. I do have people that I can connect with and that truly understand. Yeah, totally. And there's a whole room full of them here nodding along the way that I am. For me personally, that's how I learn the best is through stories, which is why I do what I do. It's a passion of mine. But the thing that you pointed to just now that was really powerful for me also was just the self -talk that was going on in my head at that point was so vicious. It was so negative. And I was just brutalizing myself by the time I got in there. Like you said, I was the worst person. Let's be honest, I did some pretty bad things. And so there was some evidence available for that theory. But that's not the whole story. I was also a sick person. And I'd also done some really good things. And so being among people who have felt that way in the past and getting their compassion back in such a direct way was life -saving for me. Yeah. That's so important what you just said too, that it wasn't the whole story. I always say, we are all a thousand piece puzzle and I definitely have some bad pieces. I have some trauma pieces and I have pieces of my personality that can be really unpleasant. I have bad pieces, but that's not all my pieces. We all have good ones and bad ones. And luckily because of recovery, my bad pieces have gotten a little bit smaller and my good pieces have gotten a little bit bigger. But it's important to remember that, that it's not the whole story. And just like as a sober person, I'm sure you'll agree with this too, being sober a long time, my sobriety isn't my whole story either. There's still all these other pieces and facets of my personality that are super important that I have to be mindful of. And I have to nurture all those pieces too. Totally. Yeah. And maybe the most valuable thing that I learned in early sobriety was to discount my thoughts by about 90%. For sure, yes. Whether they were good or bad. On the long list of things that I have no control over, my thoughts is at the top of that list. This brain just cranks out bad data on a regular basis. So the most useful thing that I can do is to understand that. And when I get an idea or a thought or whatever it is, say, okay, that's just a thought. That's not a fact. That is not how the world is. That is not how this person is. That is not how I am. It's just the latest thing that comes out of this head of mine. And I learned to try to lead as much as possible with my heart and not with my head because my heart is much more reliable. My love, my compassion, if I lead with that, I really can't go too wrong. I can't really mess things up too badly. I'd been in the process of messing things up for a long time. So I was in the stop messing things up business at that point. And so that was a very good strategy for me for a long time. It remains a good strategy. Yeah. Remembering too that those thoughts don't put down the drink. Those thoughts in my head, that self -talk and how vicious it was, didn't magically disappear when I stopped chugging tequila on a daily basis. That's the stuff. That's really the recovery part that you have to work on and shift that. And just having that understanding is so powerful too that I couldn't trust what my head was telling me early in the game. I needed outside counsel. I needed another human that was farther along in the process that I could talk those things through. I think, well, this is what my head's telling me. This is what I think I should do to have that person go, oh, no, that's not what you want to do at all. Exactly. Yeah. I totally relate to that. For me, the tone of the voice changed over time. It was equally unreliable, but it was not as negative over time. And that's actually one of the themes in Killing Hurt is that the main character, because he's been sober for a little while and he feels better and his life conditions have improved and he's living a sober life, he becomes much more confident in this voice in his head and he doesn't realize that he's still full of bad ideas. So he has all of these sort of judgments and all of his thinking and he's so sure of them because he's a smart guy and he establishes in the beginning of the book how smart he is and how vital that is to his character, but he's wrong all the time. It's like amazing how often this guy's wrong and that's me. That's how I walk through the life. That's kind of what I like to do with the book is whatever I'm journaling on, whatever I'm 10th stepping in my recovery, it ends up being sort of embedded in one of these characters somehow. Okay. So you just mentioned 10th stepping. So I want you to explain to everybody what that is because a vast piece of my audience is not going to understand what that means. Oh, sure. Yeah. So steps 10, 11 and 12 are in AA, the maintenance steps, meaning these are the steps that you're supposed to do for the rest of your life once you finish your step work. So the 10th step is essentially your inventory. So each night, the way that I do inventory is that I sit down with a notebook every night and I just write what's going on in my head and then I look at what's there and I try to identify where are my character defects at play in this story that's playing out in Will Thatcher's head. I point them out. I'm like, okay, there's some greed, there's some dishonesty, there's some fear, a lot of fear in my inventory.
Crypto Curious
A highlight from 96 - Token2049 Highlights, Binance's SEC Showdown, Yuga Labs Update & Friend.tech on roids!!
"One of the big questions is - What is money? For practical purposes, it exists in a series of heterogeneous databases, very different databases. Do you believe in crypto? Digital currency may be an answer, but it is a highly respectable disaster. I'd go on Bitcoin. There is no second best. Welcome to the Crypto Curious podcast, proudly brought to you by the Bamboo app. Crypto Curious is your go -to source for all things cryptocurrency. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the world of crypto, we've got you covered. Each week, we'll break down the top news stories of the past seven days, giving you the information you need to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. Plus, we'll share quick bites of news and insights that you won't want to miss. If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting in our early episodes, where we break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever -evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. On today's episode, we'll give you a complete rundown on the token 2049 event that Blake and I attended in Singapore last week. Sneak peek, it was pretty amazing. Then we'll get into a number of big stories over the past few weeks, including Yuga Labs producing a movie, Binance are in hot water again, the Friend Tech field day, and we can't miss out on more FTX shenanigans. So stay tuned. My name's Tracey, and I'm joined by my pals, Blake and Craig, as we catch up on the crypto news. Hey guys, how are you going? Very well, Trace. Back in the swing of things this week. How are you? Yeah, good. After a week off. Did you miss us, Craig? Yeah, sure. No. That convincing. was I got an extreme FOMO from the group chat photos that you were sending and the talks that you guys went to that looked like a lot of fun, and I wish I went, but maybe next year. Yeah, definitely. Definitely next year. Maybe we should just dive straight in then and talk all about the token 2049 conference, which is the largest annual digital asset events in Asia and Europe. And this year it was bringing together the leading voices and the most sensational projects in Web3. And we did. We had an awesome time. Singapore is amazing. It was my first trip to Singapore. And Blake, give us your initial impressions and what you loved about the event. Yeah, so this is probably the biggest crypto conference in Asia, really. And I think about 10 ,000 people came to the main event itself, but then there were also about 400 side events, more than you could pick, or even too many, too many, really. And really, I think it's an industry focused event. You know, there weren't that many retail investors coming along. Tickets were priced accordingly. And yeah, it was an incredible event. They brought the who's who of the crypto industry to speak, talk about where the other projects are at and what the future looks like, the state of regulation and where we are in the market cycle. And it was fascinating to be there learning and hearing about how everyone else in the industry is thinking. And there was certainly no indication of us being in a bear market. My God, no, it was money, wasn't it? It was out of control. You know, the big exchanges were, were splashing cash around. The Formula One was on at the same time. So lots of people added a bit of excitement, didn't it? Yeah, we're coming over for that. And yeah, we could probably, you know, maybe give us your high level thoughts, Trace, and then we can get into a couple of the interesting things that we learned. Yeah, look, I think it was a really vibrant atmosphere. There were some excellent speakers. I was impressed with the setup. And the event ran really smoothly trying to get 10 ,000 people in over two days. You know, you'd expect a few hiccups, but there wasn't. I thought it was pretty, it was pretty well done. You know, there was a real big emphasis on, on building. And like you said, you certainly didn't feel like you were in a bear market at all. There was just money being splashed everywhere. Lots of giveaways, you know, certainly went trying to get a bit of merch to make Craig feel jealous. Definitely got a few to pop into the chat. What about the talks, guys? Like, which one was your most impressive project, most impressive person that you saw? Yeah, there's a couple that really stood out for me. Firstly, there was a talk on stablecoins, looking at the data and the adoption rate. What was really interesting is that you're even through this bear market, the stablecoin adoption rate has is increasing as you know, the crypto prices go down and less activity happens on chain and on exchanges. And this is really pointing towards the utility of stablecoins and what they're going to mean for the future. And importantly, what was recognised in that talk was that in the US, US -based stablecoins are being used less and less and offshore and algorithmic stablecoins are being used more and more. And this is really because of the regulatory pressure in the US market. People don't want to interact with US businesses, essentially. And, you know, probably the second most interesting talk that I saw was, you know, the founders Yeah, that was my favourite. Yeah, that was interesting. I didn't think I'd love it as much as I did. But I think me and you both sat there and was like, this is really interesting. Yeah, we had the founder of Polygon, the founder of Arbitrum and the founder of ZK Sync. You can see that the ZK Sync group, probably the most technologically advanced and that's a scaling solution that uses zero knowledge protocols on top of Ethereum. And yeah, definitely the most advanced, you know, scaling solution on top of Ethereum. Secondly, your Arbitrum is very focused on research and creating a really great product that anybody could use. And of course, Polygon's focus is on business development and getting adoption from web two companies. So coming at it from three very different angles there, but all for the same purpose of increasing adoption and scalability of the layer ones. I really like that layer two talk, but much like a music festival, you had to pick who you wanted to see because they're all overlapping. There was, you know, there was a main stage upstairs, another one downstairs. There's a few different talks. I ended up stumbling into the Neo founder, do his chat, which was really interesting. I quite liked that one. And for everyone's information, Neo is a layer one blockchain that was founded in China, very much focused on, you know, being an Eastern kind of competitor to Ethereum or so on. You guys remember the Chinese Ethereum narrative and it pumped Neo like 200X? Been around for a long time. Yeah. So you just kind of, but there was a lot of stans, a lot of people, you know, shilling a lot of different things and, you know, you could kind of get lost there for a while. There was a strong push for mainstream adoption through Web3 and gaming. And I think that was on a lot of panel discussions and a lot of side events were also pushing that. I know Animoca Brands had a lot of big events as well. So I think that was a big focus also. I think we didn't get to see him, but Robbie from Immutable was over there speaking as well. Now, was there one project that you didn't hear of that sort of came across a token at the conference? Like, was there a project that you put into your watch list? Not really. Just the big dogs just reinforcing there. Yeah. Just talking about where the innovation is moving, you know. And one thing that really stood out to me is that, you know, the regulation conversation just isn't that prominent in Asia because the regulation in Asia, the regulation in Asia, there's no issues. And, you know, I think that we can easily have a US -centric point of view sometimes. But in Asia, they're ready to do business there. You know, there's lots of investment happening. There's lots of deals happening. There's lots of growth happening. And some of those stories we'll talk about in today's episode. All in all, the event was memorable one for us and worth attending for our team. And it really did reinforce, you know, our love for the industry and just how far we have all come. And so if anyone's referenced token 2049, the next event will happen in Dubai in early 2024, in April, I believe. So you can check that one out. In April? That's only like six months away. I know. I did say to Blake that I thought that was quite soon. I think they have multiple events. You know, they have them in different regions. There you go. Well, I'll go to that one for the crypto curious community. I'll fly the flag. Cheers. Now, folks, we're going to mix it up a little bit this week, and we're going to cut out our short, sharp news bites at the end, and we're going to go to a few biggest stories because, as you know, we missed our show last week. So we're going to cover off a few biggest stories, starting with Franklin Templeton, a large asset manager who has joined the race for the holy grail, the Spot Bitcoin ETF. As we've previously reported, the aim of many of these leading institutions applying for ETF is to attract large institutional investors, which could potentially bring trillions of dollars into the crypto industry. So Franklin Templeton's ETF will be based on a mix of crypto exchange Bitcoin prices to deter price manipulation. So just another big boy entering the space and solidifying the general thesis that it is inevitable that this Bitcoin Spot ETF will happen. There you go, boys. What else are we going to catch on that's happened in the last few weeks, Craig? Yeah. So last week Vitalik, the Ethereum founder, he had his Twitter or X account hacked, and he shared a malicious link, and it actually led to just under $700 ,000 that was drained from people's wallet. So it was just a scam. People connected their wallet, got drained. But it was coming from his official Twitter. Right. Okay. This was due to a SimSwap attack. Right. These big dogs, even they get hacked. So stay on it. Stay safe, everybody. Yeah, we had that story a couple of weeks ago where your people's private keys were being stolen from their password manager, which had a vulnerability. So even when you're doing best practice activities, you know, sometimes you're still not safe. Can't trust anything. All right. Next up, we have a story that came out on the 13th of September. So received FTX approval from the US bankruptcy court to sell and hedge its crypto holdings valued at $3 .4 billion. That's a lot of bloody crypto. This is when everyone was freaking out about where they were going to drop their salon. Yep. Yeah. So we talked about Galaxy Digital was engaged to help, which is a big crypto focused asset manager to help the liquidators or the administrators sell down these assets. So what they have is $1 .16 billion worth of Solana and they have $560 million in Bitcoin and the rest in other tokens. So, you know, this is a little bit concerning. I think the Bitcoin market could probably absorb, you know, the sell down of $560 million of Bitcoin over, you know, a period of time. But what's the market cap, Craig, of Solana? Well, Solana is still, you know, in the billions. Let me just fact check. They can't sell all the Solana at once or it's going to be $9 .2 million of Solana released for them to sell every month, which I think is fine. So not all the Solana will be dumped in the market, but they have an $8 billion market cap. Yeah. And Solana did take a bit of a dump. I think it dumped around 5 % off this news. It's about 20 % of 15 to 20 % of Solana's market cap. But if they're smart, they're going to do this strategically over time anyway. Yeah, well, the three biggest holdings are Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And then the other ones I've got is APT, Updos, Doge, Tron, Matic, Ripple and BNB. Very minuscule amount of BNB. So, yeah, this caused a bit of a shakeout, didn't it guys? Yeah. But, you know, I'm sure that they'll work on a strategy to release those tokens back into the market over time. I will potentially suppress price, but, you know, hopefully not for too long. Next one. This has happened over the last four or five days. The SEC has gone after the Stoner Cats project. I remember this one from a few years ago and mainly for its connection with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher because it was, you could buy the rights to, it was a TV show, a cartoon Stoner Cats show. I think they only produced a couple of episodes and Mila and Ashton were the voices of the Cats. I think Jane Fonda was also one of the voices. So the SEC has charged a project for conducting an unregistered NFT offering that raised $8 million and one of the arguments the SEC used was that the entire, the entity promoted the potential for its NFT prices to increase in the secondary market, similar to all NFTs. So Stoner Cats agreed to pay a $1 million penalty and to destroy all NFTs in its possession, but they did not have to admit that it was guilty of the charges. So setting precedent there, so I'm not sure if that was the best way to go for them. And the SEC, you know, are really going for different projects at the moment. This wasn't the first one in recent weeks. So one to watch here, I know Elliot from our marketing team, who you guys see sometimes on our Instagram page, sent an article around talking about the SEC going after NFT projects and Guy from the Coin Bureau also made a big statement about it recently that he's slightly concerned. What are your thoughts, Blake? Well, I think there's a big lesson here. Don't sell cryptographic assets to Americans. Stay the hell away and you'll be fine.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Courts Hand SEC Half an L in Binance US Case
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, September 19th, and today we are talking about Binance and their SEC court decision yesterday. Is it significant? And is it just kicking the can down the road? We will go through all of that. Before we do, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, it is a day that ends in Y, so there is, of course, another Binance story. Binance had a fairly big day in court on Monday in their legal battle with the SEC. Leading into the hearing, the allegations and speculation had started to reach a fever pitch. The SEC had begun to hone in on the theory that Binance U .S. did not and never had exclusive control over customer assets. That if true would be a big deal as Binance had always maintained that U .S. customer assets were strictly segregated from the international exchange. Indeed, they used this argument to defend an SEC injunction shortly after the legal proceedings commenced in June. If granted, the injunction would have frozen assets at Binance U .S., which would have functionally been a death sentence for the domestic exchange. In deciding that injunction, the court ordered the parties to come back with an agreement that they could both live with rather than making a decision on their own. As part of those consent orders, Binance agreed that they would ensure that only local U .S. staff would have access to customer assets. However, as the SEC dug further into their investigation, they claimed that Binance U .S. which they viewed as intimately linked to Binance International. Cefu was launched under the name Binance Custody in December 2021. It was renamed in February of this year, around the same time that rumors of an in -depth government investigation into Binance first emerged. On Friday, Cefu asserted in a press release that they were entirely separate from Binance International and that they don't even service BAM Trading, which is the company that operates Binance U .S. They wrote, We strongly reject this claim. As a custody technology services provider under Cefu Holdings, we are committed to servicing institutional clients with digital asset custody solutions in select jurisdictions, excluding the United States, among others. Furthermore, Cefu's operations and services are distinctly separate from BAM and Binance Holdings Limited." A Cefu spokesperson added that, Unfortunately, earlier in the week, Binance U .S. had contradicted parts of that claim in a legal filing. Rather than denying the use of Cefu in their operations, Binance U .S. acknowledged that the service was developed by Binance International and licensed to the U .S. entity. And while the specific origin of the Binance U .S. custody system might seem like a minor detail, this is the main focus of the lawsuit at the moment. The SEC is claiming that Binance International had de facto control over customer funds at the U .S. exchange. If that's the case, then Binance could be viewed as deliberately misleading the court surrounding this issue. It would also advance the SEC's argument that Binance U .S. was nothing more than a front to allow U .S. customers to access the international exchange and provide a veneer of domestic regulatory compliance. So that's a bit of the background. Now on Monday morning, the SEC filed additional material to support their order, which asked the court to compel Binance to cooperate with the discovery process. They said, quote, Indeed, in earlier filings, the regulator had raised issues surrounding the lack of disclosure. They noted that Binance had only produced 220 documents, many of them characterized as quote, unintelligible screenshots and documents without dates or signatures. Further, according to the SEC, Binance U .S. were resisting the deposition of a number of key executives. In a court filing in August, Binance claimed that the deposition of CEO Brian Schroeder would be, quote, You'll remember that Schroeder was confirmed to have left the company in early September, although his lack of social media presence has led some to speculate that his departure was closer to the beginning of the year. The SEC appears to have been informed of Schroeder's departure only recently and clearly haven't recruited him yet as a cooperating witness. They said that this strange turn of events and Binance's continued resistance to producing Schroeder, quote, Now, the SEC was primarily concerned that Binance U .S. was continuing to use SEFU for its custody, which could be used to shift customer assets offshore. They said that Binance U .S. had failed to convince the regulator that they had control over customer assets, adding that these claims were, quote, Binance U .S. had provided, quote, They said that, quote, BAM insists that this court, like the SEC, should accept packaged counsel narratives, carefully drafted declarations, and small curated sets of documents regarding control of BAM's customer assets, and that any lingering concerns are much ado about nothing. To top it all off, the SEC warned that Binance CEO CZ is, quote, The SEC claimed that they have demonstrated that, quote, Binance has a long history of controlling BAM to serve Binance's own unlawful purpose. Ultimately, the regulator asked the court for an order, quote, Now, in their opposing court filing placed on the record on Monday morning, Binance U .S. reiterated their claim that SEC demands were unreasonable. They called the documents requested overbroad and too much of an inconvenience. Binance U .S. further alleged that many of the documents requested are either not in the exchange's possession or fall outside the scope of the lawsuit. At 3 p .m., the parties entered the courtroom for what would be a tense hearing. Binance U .S. called the demand for documents so broad they would be impossible to produce. A lawyer representing the exchange said that, quote, The judge indicated that Binance U .S. really would need to provide a bit more documentation of their custody arrangements. They said, adding that they weren't, quote, The SEC lawyer, meanwhile, explained that the problem at the moment was that, quote, They argued that the SEC needed much more information about the wallet set up at Binance U .S. than they currently have. At one stage, the attorney for Binance exclaimed, They said that the exchange had responded to every targeted request from the regulator. The lawyer added that, quote, So what came out of all of this? Well, ultimately, the judge declined to make any orders to compel discovery from Binance, but it was made clear that the exchange would need to increase its cooperation, let's say. The judge said that they were not, adding that, quote, I'm not going to order from the bench right now that they produce or not produce things. Let's continue to try to work this out. I just want to keep things moving. The judge also noted that, quote, As investor Adam Cochran summed it up, the judge did deny the inspection but also said they needed Binance U .S. to comply and produce more documentation as the judge was not convinced of the asset backing. This is saying the inspection is overkill for now and giving Binance the chance to comply. Now, ultimately, these issues around Sifu are largely still about litigating whether the assets of Binance U .S. should be frozen to prevent customer funds from being sent offshore. However, given that volumes on the exchange have collapsed by more than 99 percent over the past six months, it seems likely that users have largely taken that issue off the table already. The matter is scheduled to return to court on October 12th for a follow -up hearing. Now, outside of the hearing, the court docket continues to bloat with additional evidence gleaned by the SEC. Much of this evidence was originally filed under seal or in a heavily redacted form, but the regulator is currently in the process of unsealing documents. Earlier this month, the SEC obtained the cooperation of the former auditor for Binance U .S., which produced in excess of 6 ,500 pages on the accounting at the exchange. The document was unredacted on Monday, revealing the auditor's conclusion that it was, quote, very difficult to ensure the company was fully collateralized at specific points in time. One of the SEC's requests for further information filed in June related to a 250 million dollar intercompany loan given to Binance U .S. by the international exchange in December of last year. The convertible note was funded using BUSD, 183 million of which was sent to Paxos to convert into dollars. The SEC wanted some additional details about the reason for this transaction. The topic was initially flagged as confidential by Binance, but that designation was apparently successfully rebutted by the SEC. Now, there was a lot of chatter on this on Twitter. With many people taking it as evidence of some smoking gun, Binance had been less than honest about their dealings with Binance U .S. Perhaps the most intriguing tidbit, however, filed recently was a declaration given by J. Emmett Murphy of the SEC's trial division. The document, again filed on Monday, introduced into evidence three additional depositions. All three were filed under seal, but were used to support the need for further examination of the SEFU system. The declaration identified one witness as Eric Kellogg, BAM's chief information security officer, but the other two identities were redacted. All three depositions occurred over the last month, with the latest taking place last Wednesday. So here's the way that Adam Cochrane summed this all up, which I think is a pretty good TLDR. He tweets, SEC seeks court order for inspection of Binance U .S., now expressly calling out that SEFU is indeed a Binance -related entity and that Binance U .S. has been misleading the court. The SEC calls out that this violates the consent decree that required new wallets expressly away from Binance International Control and Access, but interestingly specifically notes this is important as Binance has controlled BAM for its quote, own unlawful purposes. That's a claim we've not seen the SEC lobby here before, at least not outside of anything sealed or redacted. We also learned for the first time that the SEC sought the testimony of Brian Schroeder, U .S. CEO, and Jasmine Lee, U .S. CFO, but have been denied and fought on that and only just got told that Schroeder is no longer CEO, despite Schroeder being missing for eight plus months. They had argued that Schroeder's testimony would be too disruptive to business and now got told he isn't on the job, which is wild, as I think we all assumed he pulled a Catherine Coley Brian Brooks and gave testimony. Seems he's just disappeared and gone silent? Either way, the SEC here is suggesting, one, there is evidence of crimes, two, there is indeed evidence that SEFU is Binance International, three, SEFU is not simply a wallet provider, and four, BAM executives themselves lack insight on Binance U .S. assets and tooling. Now, for completeness, Adam Cochran also tweeted about the deposition from the auditor that said that it was impossible to tell whether Binance U .S. had been fully collateralized at specific points in time. He said, if your own external auditor can't say you are fully collateralized when you are supposed to be a 100 % reserves exchange and have your own proof of reserves that claim you're over collateralized, that is a problem. Binance uses the SEFU wallet custody system, previously Binance Custody, for both Binance International and Binance U .S., as noted in their filings. If this system is not capable of managing the small Binance U .S. numbers, how could it keep track of International? And if Binance U .S., its more compliant exchange, never commingled or misused client funds and was isolated from International as they claim, then it would be literally impossible to have a gap. The only way this is possible is the misuse of customer funds resulting in losses. I believe at some point in their scaling, they had material losses when misusing customer funds and exposing themselves to leverage via BNB. They've continued to misuse customer funds to try and cover this hole, but a declining market has made that an ongoing shell game. Whether you think that is a fair assessment or not, there should at this point be absolutely no doubt that the correct risk model is to move your assets off of Binance. Now, for the sake of a counterpoint, Bruce Fenton tweeted this morning, Binance is perhaps the most scrutinized and attacked company in modern history. The United States has investigated them and thrown everything they can at them. Yet, despite all this, we don't have a single accusation, let alone evidence, that Binance has lost customer funds. Now, trying to wrap this all up, a lot of the commentary around this is trying to figure out if the SEC won or lost this court trip. Will Clemente from Reflexivity Research tweeted, courts have been handing the SEC L after L lately, but others aren't so sure. CZ certainly didn't think so, retweeting someone who wrote, seems like they can't find anything but they want to continue making headlines. Maybe the most middle of the road interpretation came from the headline from Bloomberg, which read, SEC fails to win immediate inspection of Binance US software, and I think that that fails to win is probably a better representation at this point than actually getting the loss. But my friends, as you can tell, we are well in the minutia of this, but the details matter. There certainly is a feeling of crescendo to this story. And either way, it's hard for me to imagine that the industry isn't better on the other side of it. Better because Binance has vindicated, or better, unfortunately, because the last giant has fallen, and we can finally move on, largely rid of what came before. In either case, I will be sure to keep you updated. So until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1406: Bitcoin Will Hit $4 Million, Rising 100x - Peter Thiel
"In today's show, we'll be discussing Bitcoin Bollinger Bands hitting a key zone as Bitcoin price fights for $27 ,000. In breaking news just in, Bitcoin hash rate hits a new all -time high. Let's go. And quoting Stacey Herbert, Bitcoin is pumping on the news of President Bukele's speech to the UN tonight. Can't wait. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin Adoption Fund launched by Japan's $500 billion Nomura Bank. That's right. The Bitcoin Adoption Fund will have long -only exposure to Bitcoin and be available to institutional investors. We'll also be sharing Sam Bankman, Fried's father, dragged his mother into an FTX US salary dispute. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Also in today's show, Bitcoin gearing up for a post -having parabola, according to crypto analysts. I'll be sharing his very bullish all -time high target. We'll also be discussing crypto asset market cap should explode 5 to 10x during the next bull cycle, according to investor Raoul Pal. I'll also be sharing Peter Thiel's $4 million Bitcoin price prediction, and we'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Again, that's cryptonewsalerts .net. Welcome everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1406. I'm your host JV. And today is September 19th, 2023. We have lots to cover as usual. Massive shout out to everyone today in the live chat. Please let me know where you're tuning in from. And at the end of the show, I'm going to be reading everyone's comments out loud. Let's kick off today's show with our market watch as we do each and every day, the entire crypto market back in the green with Bitcoin back above $27 ,100 and checking out coinmarketcap .com, the current crypto market cap on the climb at $1 .08 trillion with roughly $27 billion in volume for the past 24 hours, Bitcoin dominance at 49 .2 % and the Ether dominance at 18 .4%. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we have TonCoin leading the pack up 5%, trading at $2 .57, followed by GMX up about 5%, trading just under 36 bucks, followed by Conflux up 4%, trading at $0 .12. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week, virtually 95 out of the top 100 cryptos are in the green. Some of the top gainers include GMX, GRT, as well as CRV and NEO. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated at 46 in fear, same as 37 in fear. So there you have it. How many of you are pretty stoked for this most recent pump? And how many of you agree with Stacey Herbert that this pump is due to Bukele's speech scheduled for this evening? Let me know, fam. And now let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what's popping with the king crypto. Bitcoin could see fresh upside volatility as the price action and the strength revisits a key level according to a classic metric. In a new post, John Bollinger, creator of the Bollinger Bands volatility indicator, says Bitcoin was positioned for a breakout decision. That's right. After hitting new September highs the day prior, Bitcoin has been challenging resistance levels out of reach since mid -August, according to data from Cointelegraph and TradingView. Now for Bollinger, the signs for Bitcoin are encouraging. Bollinger Bands use a standard deviation around the simple moving average to determine both the likely price ranges and volatility. And as Michael Saylor once said, volatility equals life force. Now, currently Bitcoin is putting in daily candles that touch the upper band. And when this happens, it can signal an imminent reversal back to the center band, or conversely, an inbound fit of upside volatility. Now narrow Bollinger Bands seen on Bitcoin recently lend weight to hopes that the latter scenario will now play out, quitting him here. And then there is the first tag of the upper Bollinger Band. After the new set of controlling bars were established at the lower band, he commented alongside this chart, the question is now, can we walk up to the upper band or is it too early to answer? What are your thoughts, chat? Let me know in the comments below. Now Bollinger characterizes the current mood among seasoned Bitcoin traders and analysts on the short -term timeframes. Despite the strength seen this week, caution abounds as various trend lines previously acting as support remain above the spot price. Now discussing the situation, we had on -chain monitoring resource, material indicators share the following. We have heavy technical resistance overhead at the key moving averages and support at the lower low. It is quite possible that we round trip the range. And with any luck, we'll see a legit test of the RS levels that will give us some clarity on where Bitcoin goes from here before the end of the week. And they also shared here in update number two, as noted earlier, it appears the Bitcoin bulls are gaining some momentum, but things are not always as they seem and goes on to share that sometime after last night's candle and close open, we've seen a new trend precognition signal develop on the daily chart and it seems to be bullish. I mean, we are breaking out. We are above 27 ,000. So let's freaking go. And also more strong foundation on the technicals. You can see Bitcoin hits yet another all -time high, which virtually means the network has never been this strong and this secure. Now I'm pretty stoked to tune into President Bukele's speech to the UN this evening. What do you think he has to share besides? I told you so. Let me know, fam. And again, welcome to everyone just joining us for the live show. Lots to continue to cover. So let's continue breaking it down. Next, let's discuss this adoption fund, which is a pretty big deal coming out of Japan. Let's go check this out. Japan's largest investment bank, Numura's digital asset subsidiary, Laser Digital Asset Management, launched the Bitcoin adoption fund specifically for the institutional investors. Bring it. The official announcement noted the Bitcoin -based fund will be the first in a range of digital adoption investment solutions that the firm plans to introduce. Now Numura is a Japanese financial giant with over $500 billion worth of assets, which basically that's half a trillion, baby, offers brokerage services to leading institutional investors. The Bitcoin fund launched by its digital asset arm will now offer investors direct exposure to BTC. The Laser Digital Bitcoin Adoption Fund offers long key exposure to Bitcoin. The financial giant has chosen Kamanu as its regulated custody partner. The Bitcoin fund is a portion of Laser Digital Fund's segregated portfolio company that has been registered as a mutual fund in accordance with the Cayman Islands regulatory authority. Now, Laser Digital Asset Management head Sebastian said the Bitcoin is one of the enablers of this long -lasting transformational change and long -term exposure to Bitcoin offers a solution for the investors to capture this macro trend. Now, the Bitcoin adoption fund might be the first of its kind launched by Numura and the digital asset arm, but the Japanese investment banking giant has been investing in the digital asset ecosystem for quite some time already. In fact, September of last year, the firm launched its digital asset venture capital arm to stay at the forefront of digital innovation. And also won Dubai's virtual asset regulatory authority license to operate in the country. The long -only Bitcoin adoption fund for investors in Japan comes amid a growing discussion around Bitcoin -based investment products from regulated and mainstream financial giants. The United States SEC approved two Bitcoin ETFs, even though there is a delayed decision specifically on the spot. Bitcoin ETFs. What's up with that, Mr. Gensler? Just saying. And apart from the US, Canada and focused investment products over the past couple of years. So there you have it, mass adoption, let's freaking go, especially on the institutional level. How many of you are in Japan? I know we have some in our audience out there. Let me know. And have you ever heard of this company before? Any plans in investing through them? Let me know how you guys feel. And now let's break down the latest. It gets more surprising and shocking every day with what all is going on with Bankman -Fried and FTX. Now his parents are involved. His parents are being sued by FTX. And it's just a nightmare of a mess, to say the least. So let's break down this latest story regarding SBF. Now, Joseph Bankman, the father of the former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman -Fried, complained to his son about the salary he was receiving during his employment at FTX US, turning the issue into a family matter. In a September 18 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, FTX debtors filed a complaint against Bankman and Barbara Fried, alleging that SBF's parents misappropriated millions of dollars through their involvement in the exchange's business. And according to the court documents, Bankman's contract with FTX US should have provided a $200 ,000 annual salary following a leave of absence from the Stanford Law School in December 2021. However, Bankman seemed to express ignorance about the terms of the contract, claiming to both FTX US and his son that he was expecting a $1 million annual salary. What about all that property in the Bahamas, fam? What about all that? Hundreds of millions worth of properties? Just wanted to throw that out there. The complaint states that Bankman was putting Barbara on this, suggesting that SBF's mother may have been able to persuade her son to follow through with the salary change. Things get even more interesting. So according to the complaint, Bankman's influence paid off, with SBF later providing his parents $10 million from Alameda Research. Can you talk about commingling? A 16 .4 million property in the Bahamas, funded by FTX Trading, the ability to expense roughly $90 ,000 to FTX Trading on the island nation in the Bahamas, and options to purchase company stock. Now, when reached out to the legal team representing Bankman and Fried, but did not receive a response at the time, unfortunately, the legal action brought by the debtors was the latest in the bankruptcy case involving FTX and many of its subsidiaries filed in November of last year. Bankman Fried also faces 12 criminal charges to be spread across two trials, starting in October of 2023, which is right around the corner, fam, and March of 2024, right before the halving, scheduled for April of next year. And since the federal judge revoked his bail in August, Bankman Fried has been largely confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Where's Brooklyn at? Before the start of his October trial, then on September 19th, a three -judge panel heard an appeal from SPF's legal team requesting the former FTX CEO to be released from jail in order to prepare for the trial, citing the lack of internet access and first amendment issues. All I got to say is this, I mean, how many people realistically have access to the internet in jail? Why should he? Million dollar question right there. But what are your thoughts, fam? How do you think this is likely to play out? And do you think that Bankman Fried's parents are just as guilty as SPF himself with the commingling and the fraud of going up north of $30 billion, making it the biggest scam in history that we're aware of? Hence why we call him Mini Madoff, because he made off with billions of dollars worth of investors' money, and Gary Gensler and the SEC was protecting him behind closed doors. So it's going to be very interesting to see how all this is likely to play out. Now let's discuss post halving. We all know there is a halving scheduled roughly six months out. We all know post halving, the price action is most likely going to reach a new all -time high and enter price discovery mode. Well, this analyst shares a very intriguing target. So let's break this down, shall we? And welcome to y 'all just joining us. Say hello in that live chat. Let me know where you're tuning in from. I stream live here seven days a week from Puerto Rico. Synonymous analyst Rhett Capital tells his followers on X that Bitcoin can rally above $80 per ,000 coin in the months following next month's event. For the halving, send it. Let's go. The Bitcoin halving cuts the Bitcoin miners' rewards in half, as we all know, expected to take place in April of next year. And while Rhett Capital is a long -term bull on Bitcoin, he notes that it is possible for Bitcoin to continue its downtrend before the halving, putting him here. Hang in there and make the most of any deeper downside in this pre halving period. You won't see the post halving parabola in the outlines here in this chart. It shows you in the yellow, the pre halving period, then in the pink, the post halving resistance, and then in the green, you can see the post halving parabola when we hit those new all -time highs. Now, Rhett notes that Bitcoin may repeat its 2019 bear market cycle when it traded within a triangle pattern before breaking out and starting off the bull market, as he shares here, if Bitcoin continues to form lower highs, could Bitcoin fill the CME, which is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gap, at $20 ,000 later this year or in early 2024? So it makes a good point. There is currently a gap sitting at that $20 ,000 psychological level. And he continues, if so, the possible path could be consolidation to the apex of the black triangle before finally breaking out to close the halving. And you can see that triangle right here in this chart. Now, looking at the chart, he seemed to suggest that Bitcoin will confirm the triangle breakout in April of 2024, followed by a rally towards his long -term target. Now, let me know your thoughts, chat. How many of you agree that Bitcoin is likely to break out to a new all -time high, entering price discovery mode in 2024, the year of the halving? Let me know. And what are some of your targets? I'd also like to point out that the Stock the Flow model and Plan B, creator of that model, he suggests a $100 to $1 million range price for the King Crypto post halving. We also have some very other bullish predictions, which I cover on a daily basis here on the channel. But I'd love to know your personal prediction. I think we reached the cycle peak personally sometime in 2025, but I think 2024, we enter that price discovery mode. But I'd love to know your thoughts and your opinions in the comments right down below. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the latest from the macro guru, Raoul Pal, who is suggesting that the Bitcoin market cap and crypto market cap as a whole does something between 5 and 10x for this upcoming bull cycle. Now, you do the math. We have a crypto market cap right now. I'm going to ballpark it at a trillion. We have a Bitcoin market cap. I'm going to ballpark it at a half a trillion, which is 500 billion. So hypothetically, if we were to 10x Bitcoin in and of itself, we're talking about a 5 trillion dollar Bitcoin market cap, which would be half the current market cap of gold. Now, with the entire crypto market cap, we can potentially hit 10 trillion. Now, also note, back in November of 2021, when we hit that all time high of 69 ,000 in November of last year, the total crypto market cap was just north of that 3 trillion dollar market cap. So he's so let's break this down and shout out to Raoul Pal. Here we go. Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal says the next bull cycle can bring an explosion in the market cap of all of the digital assets. That's right. In a new interview with Altcoin Daily, the macro expert says he expects a huge increase in the adoption of digital assets, and that can cause the total market cap of crypto to skyrocket as much as 900 % from its current value during the next bull market. Quoting the analysts here, obviously, I think we'll go well through new all time highs. I think the whole ecosystem of crypto will go from 425 million users where we're at today. And I think at the end of this cycle, there'll be a billion users by that kind of use cases in which we have talked about. And let's not forget, we have got central bank digital currencies that are known as CBDCs and stable coins. There is a lot going on still. So if this entire space is going to grow 2 .5 X in the number of users, well, the market cap of the entire space is five or 10 X. Send it. Let's go. Pal also says he is closely watching development of layer two Altcoin projects for new use cases, which could boost the value of their individual market cap, quitting him again. And then let's see how people value layer twos in this. We don't really know how layer twos accrue much value. Do we have to have a massive amount of transactions in which case then you need stuff like Ticketmaster with millions and millions and millions of transactions to drive value to those chains because they batched them and batched them down to Ethereum. So there you have it. And to watch this interview, he did Raul Pal, the macro guru with Altcoin Daily entitled best cryptocurrency investing strategy into 2024. Check the show notes, blow the video in the description and let me know your thoughts on his personal prediction. Do you feel post having that the market cap for the entire crypto market can likely 10 X from the current valuation along with Bitcoin surging 10 X to roughly a five trillion market cap? And hypothetically, if the macro guru is correct, where do you think that would likely take the Bitcoin price? Well, let's run some hypothetical math. Bitcoin was the 10 X from the current price action of 27 ,000. Well, that's $270 ,000 per coin. Take that. And as we all know, Bitcoin rises like that, the entire crypto market cap would go along for the ride, including the altcoin. So please let me know in the chat, fam, which altcoins, if any, are you most bullish on in the crypto market? And what are your thoughts surrounding Raul Pal being so bullish on Solana? A few months back, I read in an interview he shared that 80 % or more of his portfolio was specifically in an altcoin called Solana. So I'd love to know your thoughts. Obviously, he has a high risk tolerance as I look at that particular cryptocurrency to be very risky, especially with all that went in with the venture capitalists and SPF and FTX exchange pumping that particular all. So I'd love to know how you feel regarding all of that. And with that being shared, fam, now let's discuss Peter Thiel and his $4 million price prediction, as well as rumor has it, and I'll be covering this as well, that he dumps most of his Bitcoin position at the top of the market practically 30 days before the crash. So let's break this down because Peter Thiel was actually one of the keynote speakers at the Miami Conference for Bitcoin. And here's what he had to share as I transcribed his speech, and then we'll discuss him reportedly making $1 .8 billion cashing out on his eight -year bet around the time he was touting these all -time high predictions. So here we go. He says, the enemy's list is a list of people who I think are stopping Bitcoin. He says there is a lot of them. They tend to have nameless, faceless bureaucratic perspectives, which of course is one of the ways they hide. He goes on to share, we are going to try to expose them and realize that this is sort of what we have to fight for Bitcoin to go up, 10x or 100x from here. Now, just FYI, to give you some perspective, at the time he made this prediction on stage at the Bitcoin Miami Conference, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $43 ,000 per coin. So you run the math. 43 ,000 times 100x is over $4 million per Bitcoin. So you know that? Let's continue with what he had to share. The central banks are going bankrupt. We are at the end of the fiat money regime. How many of you agree with that statement? I agree there 100%. The first person on the list is Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Thiel put up a picture of Buffett with two of his most famous quotes about Bitcoin. One was rat poison and the other, I don't own any and I never will. I also like to point out now since then, Warren Buffett has much indirect exposure to Bitcoin through Bitcoin mining stock companies and etc. So go figure. If you can't beat them, join them, right? And he goes on. He opined, I think the direct in it. Yeah, and I say also Charlie Munger goes along with him. Now, feel further noted that Buffett has a bias and makes him long on fiat money system and money managers who follow the Berkshire Hathaway executives advice will pretend it's complicated to invest into Bitcoin. I think we call that FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now expect nothing less from one of the wealthiest people in the fiat money matrix Ponzi scheme. You know what I mean? So just saying. The next person on the list of Bitcoin's enemies is the one and only JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, or as Max Kaiser calls him, Jamie the tapeworm. They'll put diamonds picture up with the following quote. I don't call them crypto currencies. I call them crypto tokens because currencies have rules of law behind them, central banks and tax with authorities. Now you guys already know how I feel personally about JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. So I won't go any deeper there. But anyways, we know he's an enemy of Bitcoin and always has been. The next picture he put up was of the BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, with the following quote. I see huge opportunities in a digitized crypto blockchain related currency, and that's where I think it is going to go. Now just FYI, Larry Fink is the CEO of the largest asset management firm in the entire world, which owns a large share in virtually all the companies in the S &P 500, and that is BlackRock. They currently have over $10 trillion in assets under management. And for a long time, he was spreading FUD regarding Bitcoin. But guess what? Like I mentioned earlier, if you can't beat them, join them because they just most recently, a few months ago, they submitted their application for a spot Bitcoin ETF, which ultimately means they're going to be introducing this to the institutions which have trillions upon trillions of dollars as there's currently north of $700 trillion in total addressable market, and they want their piece of the Bitcoin pie. So he goes on to share, the PayPal co -founder added that Fink's quote is somewhat representative of the whole genre of Bitcoin attacks that need further context, stating that pro -blockchain is an anti -Bitcoin term, very typically. Feel then brought up the environmental, social, and governance, ESG standards, elaborating the following, the label they have come up with, and perhaps the real enemy is ESG. I think that ESG is just a hate factory. Also like to throw out there, Elon Musk, he stopped taking Bitcoin payments for Tesla, and he says it's because of the FUD regarding this ESG, and we all know it's not more than FUD, and it's already been proven that Bitcoin is more than 50 % clean energy. So the million dollar question, when will the world's supposedly wealthiest man, Elon Musk, when will he start accepting Bitcoin payments again for Tesla? Isn't that a great question, and wouldn't you love to know the answer to that? Maybe you should ask Elon and tag him on X and see what he says. Anyways, feel stressed. You can always ask the question, what's the difference between ESG and the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party? Well, when you think ESG, you should be thinking of CCP per H. Now, he also goes on to share, it is the finance gentocracy that runs the country through whatever silly virtue signaling or hate factory to them, just like ESG, the billionaire concluded. This is what I would call and what you have to think of as a revolutionary youth movement, and we have to just go out from this conference and take over the world. So there you have it, fam. What are your thoughts surrounding Peter Thiel's prediction that we are likely to 100X, and along with his enemies list, as it seems, a lot of the enemies have come around and now have direct exposure to BTC, but it doesn't stop there because around that time he was making this $4 million Bitcoin price prediction. He allegedly dumped most of his position cashing out and with over a billion dollars in profits for his fund. So let's also break this down as this is also very relevant. How many of you were able to watch the speech he gave at that Bitcoin conference? It was epic, to say the least. I recall it now. So here we go. Check it out. Peter Thiel's venture capital firm reportedly made $1 .8 billion closing out its crypto positions around the time when he was an early Bitcoin bull, still predicting the token's price to surge by 100X. And again, from 43 ,000 price action, 100X means over 4 million. Founders Fund had cashed out almost all of its bets on digital assets by March of 2022, according to the Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter. But Thiel was still backing Bitcoin, obviously, when he spoke at the crypto conference in Miami the following month. He went on to share where at the end of the fiat money regime, he said, adding that the token's price could increase 100 fold from its level at the time, which was reported at $44 ,000 per coin. That prediction was proven false and as rising interest rates and failures, the high profile firms like Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital, FTX, Terra Luna dragged the crypto sector into the prolonged bearish winter. Now Bitcoin plummeted by over 60 % in 2022 and was trading at under 17 ,000 by the end of the year. And I believe the bottom currently for the cycle is 15 ,700. How many of you feel that that bottom is in? Let me know, chat. Founders Fund first started pouring money into crypto all the way back in 2014, when Bitcoin was only trading at roughly $750 per coin. So by the time Bitcoin reached its all time high in November of 2021, it had surged 8 ,500 % from that particular level. Not too shabby for a seven year run, wouldn't you say? Now Thiel has a long track record as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent tech investors. He took early stakes in startups, which include Facebook, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and ride hailing app Lyft, and even co -founded PayPal back in 1998. Thiel is also a high profile supporter of the Republican Party and continued to voice his support for Donald Trump since the former president left office in January of 2021. The fund held around two thirds of his portfolio in Bitcoin at one time, but now not has significant exposure to crypto according to FT's sources. So there you have it. Fam, what are your thoughts surrounding his prediction and him cashing out at around that time he was making those all time high predictions of 100X? Let me know, fam. 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.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from "DO NOT Buy Bitcoin Now! Here's WHY..." | Gareth Soloway
"I'm back and we're one day before the FOMC Bitcoin still at 27 ,175 now Gareth says Gareth Soloway He says that Bitcoin can get back to $30 ,000 But then he also says that even though Bitcoin can get back to 30 ,000. He wouldn't actually buy it. Listen to this Now interestingly enough, let's talk about how high can price rally right? So, I mean, let's let's talk about it So if you're someone who's saying wow, do I buy Bitcoin now? Honestly the answer is no now But he does think you can go back to to $30 ,000 So listen, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get Gareth on the show a bit later on He's gonna talk to us about what he meant when he said he thinks Bitcoin can go back to 30 ,000 level But he wouldn't actually be buying Bitcoin right now and that's ahead of the FOMC now. Remember it's a big FOMC why because we haven't heard from Jerome Powell since the 25th and 26th of July, so we haven't heard anything from Jerome Powell since the 25th and 26th of July and Remember that since the 21st and 26th of July we've had two very big inflation readings So the big question is what is Jerome Powell going to do tomorrow? Is he going to engineer a soft landing that is one thing that he could be doing or or or is he going to Fly the plane like that plane that got lost I think what we need to do is we need to spend some time talking about this because honestly Honestly, honestly, honestly I Mean, how can anyone? Lose an 80 million dollar plane even the Biden administration. Like how can you lose an 80 million dollar plane? No one can lose an 80 million dollar plane. Not even the Biden administration So this we've got a lot to talk about today. We're also gonna talk about finance We're gonna talk about finance in the SEC. They did go to court yesterday There was a little bit of FUD that came out of the court case yesterday Usually as you know, I don't really pay attention to the finance FUD But this time it's coming from the same people that warned me about Celsius and they were right So I took the side of Celsius and they were right So as I said, I don't usually pay attention to finance FUD because I think it's like usually just bat And I think there's too much finance FUD But I do think we need to talk about what came out of the hearing yesterday. So listen, I'm back We've got a huge show today one day before the FOMC. Let's go guys I Mean we have to laugh we have to laugh Not only did they lose a plane But then like to make matters worse they want us to help them Find the plane now. I mean, this is a true story They lost an 80 million dollar plane and they want us to help them find a plane That's the type of discussion that I usually have with James like I lost the soundboard James. Where's the soundboard? I lost it on the way to work. Anyway, we'll talk we'll talk about the plane later. There's a lot to talk about Listen guys, I'm back. I'm back in the studio. We've got a lot to discuss today Got a big show ahead of the the FOMC Also, I want to talk to a little bit about Asia I want to talk to you about Binance I want to talk to you about altcoins because we are getting bounces in the altcoins as you can see right here on the bubbles But it seems like it's stuff going up one day and down the next day Which means that there's no new capital coming in we know that and what that also means is that we're getting Asset money rotation between between one place or another and then also as a city later on gathers Garrett's coming on the show So we've got a lot to talk about we're a lot we're gonna be here together But let's talk about remember if you haven't yet subscribed the channel help us because one of the things that I realized in Singapore Was the bigger our channel the bigger the guests we can get on the channel the more attention they pay their pay to us And so when you guys subscribe to this channel when you like this content And we get the content out there and you subscribe to the channel That helps the channel grow that helps us bring more bigger guests onto the channel. That's why we need you I'll bring you the highest alpha per minute show in the world every single day and You will just like the content and then everything's fine. Everything works. It's a symbiotic relationship. Anyway, let's talk about Where we are right now Let's go to the charts what we can see when we look at the charts is that Bitcoin is above 27 ,200 one day before the FOMC meeting now, I heard rumors earlier That the reason why Bitcoin was actually rising is because the mount gox trustee may be forced to delay the distribution of the mount Bitcoin 2024 till that was actually written up by the blocks I heard the rumors much earlier today and then the block wrote something about it They're saying Bitcoin bounce may be due to mount gox delay rumors, but still targeting 22 ,000. That's a fan manager called QCP bitcoins price is largely due to rumors of delay that mount gox may drag their payments into 2024 that's actually exactly what I heard earlier today. So it could be that we may not be getting the mount gox Bitcoin hit in the market. Now you ask yourself. Why would that happen? So you very simply why would that would happen mount gox was hacked in 2014 this this this story took place in 2014 The liquidator like the FTX liquidator earns money on The longer this drags out the more the liquidator and it's almost like think about it like a lawyer Okay so the more this thing drags out the more money that the liquidator makes and it looks like the liquidator is going to continue to Pressure the side of the year now, let's go back to the charts because I want to show you something back on the chart So then if you remember but Kyle dupes said something very interesting. He said look when we get this death cross What will happen after the death crosses, but Bitcoin will go down But then Bitcoin will go up back to the price of where the death cross happened, which is twenty seven thousand seven hundred so so far Kyle's little I don't know if you want to call it a prediction is is actually playing out and playing out exactly like said Gary says we can actually go even to 30 ,000. I actually think that both of them are wrong I think that we may at some point soon this year this this month this year We will break that 30 ,000 everyone. I've been saying it for a while I don't know if you remember but I did say at the beginning of September when everybody was completely bearish about Bitcoin and everyone said oh September's gonna finish down because it finishes down every single September. I said no guys I think September's gonna finish up so far. I'm up five point five two percent So so far it feels to me like like like like I'm gonna look I'm gonna Get this but you must realize what's actually happening here James. What what's for lunch? Scacra doesn't talk but he's chewing here. I can hear the chewing going in my one ear and out and out over there Anyway, what we are seeing here is you need to look at the open interest on Bitcoin and what you realize is that the open? interest is just Completely tracking the price which means that price goes up open interest goes up price goes down open interest goes down That's what's going on here, which means it's just short term Ups and downs so to speak that are happening in the market and it's not real volume or real buying coming in So we still I'm still not convinced that this is the pump that's gonna take us over 30 ,000 But I am convinced that bitcoins gonna go north of 30 ,000 end of September Maybe even early October and I think shaldino shares the same the same sentiment as me because he's just opening lungs and lungs and Lungs and you should I think today you opened another long on the show. Did you guys did you guys watch Sheldon show today? scarecrows Scarecrows don't talk but the children open along yes or no scarecrows He opened us a line along. Okay, so say he did open a lot the guys got big big big kahunas I think the same thing was happening with alts when I look at the alt coins It looks like we're just getting a shift from one old coin to another old coin So yesterday roll, but was up today roll, but is down yesterday rune was up today rune is down and that's exactly what's happening There's no big moves. Let's just quickly check on the one hour time frame. No big moves. No big moves in all coins it's basically just a rotation of Many the good thing is that the fundamentals of Bitcoin and I said I don't say this likely but the fundamentals of Bitcoin have actually Never ever ever been stronger and what I mean when I say the fundamentals of Bitcoin have never been stronger So there's two parts of the fundamentals. The one part of the fundamental is the research So what does the research say? What are the fundamentals behind it? The other part of the fundamentals is something that is unique to Bitcoin and unique this asset class Which is the on -chain data because if you look at other asset classes, they don't really have on -chain data Bitcoin has on -chain data So, you know like when we say fundamentals we can actually just go to the chain and we can just say look Well, what is it? What does the chain say? What is the the data on chain say and here this is where it gets a little Bit exciting so it gets very exciting. The first thing is long -term The supply held by long -term holders up to the highest that it's ever been so you can see the percentage Supply that is held by long -term holds the Bitcoin never ever ever been higher that is Also evident here where you can see that 80 % of all Bitcoin have not moved in the last six months so what we're seeing here is long -term holders keep growing and then when they lot they hold they They hold for forever because it hasn't moved for more than six months What we also see is we see the short -term holders have been capitulated. They're out of the market. We don't see them anymore They were here. They they were good tourists and then we said bye -bye and they were just sending their money back to exchanges When I look at the unchain The unchain data right now and I said I don't say this lightly the unchain data right now looks the most positive that's ever been because the coins are sitting with the people who ain't gonna sell the Coins and when I say anchor solid coins, they holding the coins for for six months plus The sentiment is also very good. And I saw this tweet by Chris Paniski and he He shares the same sentiment that I shared in Asia He was struck by how incredible and what the buzz is that happened in a token 2049. You can see his his These guys are killing my ears Thanks guys. Thanks for thanks for destroying my eardrums. I used to have eardrums now they're gone Anyway, that's his version of what happened at token 2049, but he's been around for a while He says contrasting token 25 20 49 to the first bear market conference. I went to inside Bitcoin in April 2015 the worlds are completely different and that's true because Even though from a pricing point of view, we're in a bear market I'm gonna show you something very very very interesting about where we are in the market The other thing that's happening now, which we haven't seen in Bitcoin for for for a long time Since I got into Bitcoin people have been promising me that the institutions are coming into Bitcoin. It's always been the narrative It's like look we've got to prepare ourselves got to prepare us off Because you know what the institutions are coming in when the institutions come in The price of it coins gonna go to the moon and every time the institutions never came in They launched a Bitcoin futures and bang the the price collapsed So I've always been hearing since I got you That the institutions are coming into Bitcoin when the institutions come into Bitcoin They're gonna bring all the money with him But it's been this letdown because it like as much as I've been hearing about it The institutions just haven't come but they just didn't arrive now the institutions are undoubtedly undoubtedly undoubtedly here So we have got Citibank. They are now Unveiling their own Separate blockchain which is going to which which they're going to start piloting you got this is old news But you got the LSE looking to tokenize assets in the line the stock exchange As your as you will recall if you saw my video about token 2049 in Singapore I thought hey said big bull market he predicts and if you go watch that video see what he said But he basically how he breaks down why the bull market is gonna happen in 2024 he also breaks down that AI is gonna be the narrative that's gonna lead it and then he says, okay Well, then you need to you need to be buying file coin Then a German banking giant will be able to hold a number of crypto currencies for its clients So you can see what's going on here. You can see exactly what's going on Yeah, this industry is becoming more and more institutional Deutsche Bank one step closer to launching a digital asset custody service You've got Japanese banking giant Nomura launching a Bitcoin adoption fund for institutional investors You see what's going on here the institutionals the institutions are here are finally actually getting here but we are in a very very very unique time now because this is What Michael Saylor described when I interviewed Michael Saylor last time you'll remember it if you watch the Michael Saylor discussion This is what he said about where we are now about the unique time that we are now in In the cycle able to pick up the phone and call your broker and buy 50 million dollars worth of it Right. So we're at that stage where we know it's coming but We really haven't plugged Wall Street into the asset yet We're in this in between period which in my opinion is the best time to be it's like, you know the future No one else can act on it. If you if you have a crypto account with a crypto Exchange to buy Bitcoin right now So so you hear what he's saying he's saying if you we know they're coming they just it's like it's like it's like this Imagine a concert, you know, the concerts gonna start everyone's waiting at the door, but the gates aren't open yet You know when the gates open everyone's gonna come in and go to the car the concert you have the inside information But they can't act because the doors are still closed. That is where we are. Now. The institutions are coming in this morning I saw that blockchain capital Which is one of the original og funds in crypto, these are like, you know, these are two brothers original og og og funds in crypto raised 400 and say five hundred and eighty million dollars for two new funds now if you read where did they get their money from? most of the firm's limited partners are traditional institutional investors including University endowments So they've got five hundred and eighty dollars from all of these sovereign wealth funds and guys I mean if you were here in 2017 and you were here in 2018 and you were here in 2019 and notice it you look You know in next year or in two years time you're gonna get five hundred and eighty million dollars Given to two brothers in the United States Who have got a good track record and the money's gonna be given to them by institutional university By university endowment private foundations the writing's all over the world. All you have to do is You just have to Act because it's inevitable. It's completely completely completely inevitable And I know like a lot of you may may be sitting here and going yeah But you're not crypto is full of scams and you know, you know We spoke about keeping our customers happy and how every time we get the big names in crypto coming into our into our industry We destroy them, etc, etc You need to remember that every single technology goes through the cycle and I want to read you something which I saw earlier today which made me smile and and again affirm that I was in the right direction so Visa seemed like a disaster when it was first launched the kind of people who attack new things would have been all over it from From the Wikipedia article it says listen to it says they're talking about visa However, the program was riddled with problems as Williams who had never worked in a bank's loan department had been too earnest and trusting in His belief in the basic goodness of the bank's customers and he resigned in December 1959 22 % of the accounts were delinquent not the 4 % expected the police departments around the state were confronted by numerous incidents of of a brand new crime called credit card fraud Both politicians and journalists joined the general uproar against Bank of America and its new fangled credit card Especially when it was pointed out that the card holder agreement held customers liable for all charges even those resulting from fraud Bank of America officially lost eight point eight million dollars in on on the launch of Bank of America card But when the full cost of advertising and overheads were included the bank actually lost around 20 million dollars I mean if you change the word credit card there and you replaced it with the word blockchain you'd say hell them This is exactly what's going on here.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Does Donald Trump Support A Pro-Life Agenda?
"Cable news, noisy, boring, out of touch. That's why Salem News Channel is different. We keep you in the know. Streaming 24 -7 for free. Home to the greatest collection of conservative voices like Dennis Prager, Jay Sekulow, Mike Gallagher, and more. Salem News Channel is unfiltered and unapologetic. Watch anytime on any screen at snc .tv and local now channel 525. All of the time he has to spend in core rooms really hurt his campaign because so far hasn't really hurt his campaign. Yes, I would have had another 22 ,000 votes. Are you saying you needed those votes in order to win? Are you acknowledging you didn't win? I'm not acknowledging no. I say I won the election. When we ask people how they feel about getting this rematch, they said that they think that means politics in the U .S. is broken. Now from the ReliefFactor .com studios, here's Mike Gallagher. Boy, we live in a broken world, don't we? The weekend was chock full of bad news. A Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy was apparently ambushed as he sat at a red light. Somebody assassinated him. They pulled up next to him and shot him in the head. A video was released of two kids in Las Vegas murdering a retired police chief, a guy on his bike out for his morning ride in Las Vegas. These two kids thought it would be funny to mow him over to kill him and they did. According to Charlie Kirk, one of the two perpetrators is right now free. They don't even have both of them behind bars. The two punks, the two cowards, the two monsters who murdered this guy in cold blood. And also, of course, we might as well get this out of the way. We got President Trump with an answer to Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press and her debut as the new host, which gave a lot of ammunition to Trump haters who want to hurt him and try to wreck his chances of becoming the nominee in 2024. This is an interesting dilemma that Republicans have. Here's the dilemma. Pro -life is a centerpiece, is a foundation of the Republican Party fighting for the sanctity of those unborn babies, the sanctity of their lives, the sacredness of the innocent. That's a centerpiece, that's foundational for the Republican Party. And whether we like it or not, this particular debate that we're having in America is over abortion crushing us at the ballot box. And Donald Trump, I believe, was trying to address that with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. Let's get it out of the way. I've been dreading this all weekend. Well, it wasn't all weekend. I mean, this first broke, I think, Saturday. They gave a little preview of his answer. I don't love his answer, but I also don't love the way Trump critics are pouncing on him, claiming he's not pro -life. I got into a big knockdown drag out, as I expected I would with my friend Mark Davis in Dallas, because Mark is now hell -bent on proclaiming that Donald Trump is not pro -life. And he's saying that because of this exchange with Kristen Welker yesterday on Meet the Press. So for the first time in 62 years, I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean, DeSantis is willing to sign a five -week and six -week ban. Would you support that? I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. But we'll come up with a number, but at the same time, Democrats won't be able to go out in six months, seven months, eight months and allow an abortion. Now, there are people like my friend Mark Davis who took that answer and that proclaimed Donald Trump is not pro -life, like it's important to proclaim or make some kind of declaration that he is not pro -life. And here's what Mark tweeted over the weekend. The heartbeat bill is, quote, a terrible thing and a terrible mistake, unquote. Mark said, I loved every day of his presidency. Thank God he beat Hillary. And if he's the nominee, I'll walk through fire to help him beat Joe Biden. But Trump is not pro -life. Now, as expected, Mark and I had a pretty solid disagreement only because I believe it's ever a ten the march for life. The guy who promised to get Roe v. Wade overturned because that was terrible federal. That was a terrible federal ruling and appointed Supreme Court justices who did just that to claim that Donald Trump is not pro -life is preposterous. It's absurd. It's virtue signaling. And perhaps it's just the opportunistic way you chalk up some points for Ron DeSantis, because clearly Team DeSantis is pouncing on Donald Trump over this remark. I believe two things can be true at the same time. You can be pro -life and you can acknowledge that this issue is killing us at the ballot box and we're losing elections. And here's what Mike Cernovich, who's a conservative influencer on social media, here's what he tweeted or posted on X. He said, if you want to be pro -life, no exceptions, good for you. Lose every election, have no political power, then see what life looks like in a Bolshevik hellhole. Will you feel good because you didn't compromise as your children starve? That's the alternative. And I really do appreciate his point. I am pro -life. I'm proud to tell you every day about Preborn. I want you to support an organization like Preborn. I want women to see ultrasounds and see what that baby inside their womb looks like, because the chances are that woman is going to choose life. I have fought and represented the life movement for many, many years, but I'm also realistic enough to know that if we lose election after election after election because too many women are turning against the GOP over additional abortion restrictions, we're never going to have any Republicans in office to prevent more carnage against the unborn, because we may never win another election. And that's the dilemma. I truly believe that Trump was answering the question on Meet the Press with that in mind, that the reason he thinks it's a terrible idea is he thinks it's costing us elections. Is he pro -life? Of course he is. Was it a clunky answer? Perhaps. Should you want to score points by declaring that Trump is now somehow some wild -eyed pro -choice Democrat? I don't think that's fair and I don't think that's reasonable, but I'm going to turn it over to the smartest audience in America. That's you. Here's the PhD weight loss and because you probably followed this controversy over the weekend. I want to get your take on it. I want to get your reaction. I heard from my pal, Joey Hudson. A lot of people in South Carolina were shocked at what Trump said, very disappointed in his answer. Do you feel that way or do you recognize he is trying to navigate the challenge of winning elections so that we can continue to have the kind of pro -life presidency that he delivered? Am I wrong? 800 -655 -MIKE. Press one to come on air. Press two to leave a voicemail or text us your comments on the MyPillow text line, which is also 800 -655 -MIKE. 800 -655 -6453. And yes, I survived wisdom tooth surgery. Not too bad at all. I might have over -exaggerated a little bit. I know you're shocked. I was perhaps a bit melodramatic heading into the oral surgeon. Doing just fine. 16 past the hour in the Relief Factor Studios. Let's try to tackle this. Let's dive in. Okay. Head first. 800 -655 -MIKE. 800 -655 -6453. Left -leaning activists are attacking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Read The People's Justice Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories That Define Him. On sale now from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A year ago, I was well over 50 pounds overweight, but I needed a simple plan that worked with my lifestyle. I found that and so much more with PhD weight loss and nutrition. I'm 53 pounds lighter than I was, and I feel better than I have in years. The program is super simple. Dr. Ashley Lucas and her team customize a plan for your body to make it simple because weight loss shouldn't be hard. They even provide 80 % of your food at no additional cost. They treat the entire person. Dr. Ashley believes that all change starts with the mind. She'll help you change your behavior and think differently about food and the way you eat. You'll never gain the weight back. Best thing about this program, they have an 85 % success rate of their clients maintaining their weight loss for life because they have a lifetime maintenance plan to keep us on track. And maintenance, best part of all, it's absolutely free. If you're looking to lose that weight and you're looking for a job, go to myphdweightloss .com today. Sign up for your consultation. Better yet, give them a call straight away. 864 -644 -1900. 864 -644 -1900. They'll answer all your questions. Tell them my calendar sent you. Call 864 -644 -1900 or go to myphdweightloss .com.
The Aloönæ Show
A highlight from S13 E10: City of London & Equal Opportunities Discussion
"Alright alright yeah they might join us well hopefully yes that'd be good yep so I'm ready when you are alright let's go okay so I've been looking at lighters and cigars lately oh yeah mainly the point lighters and yeah the point lighters st. the point the point later it's just been curious might be something I might want to do I might want to collect lighters for some weird reason I think it might be cool don't like the smoke I don't really have anything to celebrate so maybe not smoke them but it might be good to try one at least once yeah sweet I'm hoping that Faith be joins come on ask her what's her why she it's on your teeth yeah that'd be interesting I mean I on one hand I can understand where she's coming from with what's being said about him but on the other hand I think it's important to do research because you never know unless you understand the full context not not to say everyone doesn't understand but you never know if you'd be lied to what if what we see right now is just an illusion true make to believe what we want to believe then you can live in your own fantasy land yes and a matter how hard you tried to be red -pilled you're always gonna get blue pill out of nowhere yep you gotta have a sharp mind yes yes I don't get why she thinks that men thinks she was much who I don't get what she was talking about earlier well and get understand that she doesn't want men to take over but the country of the world was built by men it was built by it every major corporation was built by a man or the vast majority of them I'll give them that I'll give the there have been some very famous male sign to female scientists Madden Curry Mary not to mention I will give them the fact that they a woman did help create the atomic bomb well I did help Einstein create the atomic bomb basically finished the Manhattan Project so they did help build that I'm not saying they can't become the biggest richest man the richest person in the world but I don't think it's gonna happen anytime this century I could be wrong I think it takes determination for women to show that they could do whatever man can it's just that that little amount of determination that there is representation on their behalf they need they need they need there needs to be something that's shown that it is possible regardless of gender religion sexuality at most whatever people group whatever people group there is a chance that you can make it I am gonna say this not all women were Putin present not all women were given their position because they're a talent a vast majority of them and this is sad to say but it kind of means women success but which is true happenstance is the fact a vast majority of these women they were put in positions that they had no business being put into didn't have the skills enough talent they were just put in there because it what's fp they want to say oh we hired a first female VP yeah oh bug off this also experience was her background exactly they don't know it they do what they do it's just ridiculous I know there are people I'm not saying all women are all women were put in this position like this I'm sure there's some ones are very qualified for the jobs and they were put given this corrosion given these opportunities but you've got a quick question of a lot of them were they truly given this jokes of our talents or they just get promoted for worship for virtue like the GM CEO Mary Barra she's unqualified unfit and quite honestly I'm surprised she hasn't been sucked and she's gonna be one of the main reasons why General Motors probably goes under that's just one not to mention I think that will be there I personally believe the future of American companies are all being run by Indian India like so basically yeah Google Indian feel Microsoft Indian there's probably offers swells is there so uh have you heard the news what news up Obama might be gay well I already know that I'm talking about another thing what's over news okay you see no there's this new immigration rule for the UK what's the immigration law so basically in short even if you're a foreigner where you're allowed to enter the UK visa -free you still need something that's called an ETA so you need permission even if you're a foreigner in a country where you can answer enter the UK visa -free you'd certainly permission to come into the country to do whatever and you can stay no longer than six months with the exception of going there for work or even long or long -term study so even if you so they have to get they actually have to go for citizenship yes you need to ask permission to the government to enter the country apply for citizenship by it seems how's the vast majority taken that well what do you think well I shouldn't you should you should know that unless we don't have a fucking field day but let's be real here yes is a little bit concerning but something has to be done about immigration yeah but but not like this so what so what so what let's repeat what they're doing again so basically blocking anybody from coming into the country technical yes what they are promoting is they need to ask the government permission to enter the country even to foreigners in countries that are given free to free access into the UK you still need to ask the government hey can I come in and then if they say yes then you can go in I wonder how that I wonder if I'll stop the boats I don't think I don't think it's about the boats what do you think that that's a separate story what do you think it's about then what do you think it's about control or for it is well has soon that killed his opportunity of staying in in power or is he oh no he's killed his chances ages ago at this point people can people are safely saying then the next election labor majority as I'll never fucking happen that'll never fucking happen well the odds say otherwise I know you don't believe I don't believe everything here in the media I wouldn't trust I wouldn't trust stormer without ever could touch him with two pennies oh no I'm not I'm not painting this in the media the the book he's saying that well the bookies are always the bookies said but Trump would never win and he did win so he's still got his chances if he can fucking fix the economy cuz trust me it's not gonna get better under stormer storms a fucking idiot if you're under stormer Jamie you're gonna be getting rid of your oil and gas you'll be dependent on the thingy and we'll be literally sucking up will be sucking will be the LGBTQ will be plastered around every fucking set will be plastered all around England you've seen the state of Scotland don't let it come to that point I feel sorry for Scots we are gonna hit I hate the LGBTQ I think some a lot of nonsense called mentally ill people doesn't help fun to smoke the representative in my stay in my down the road representative in like one of my districts that is transgender I never happens it is very important to ask people why why are you feeling the way you are why are you doing the things that you're doing I think it's a lot of it I think it's mainly really for attention at least if what we need to do is stop giving these people attention stop giving these people stopping knowledge in their existence because we acknowledge your existence we're just encouraging their behavior it's like saying when you are when a baby when a cries baby cries you don't give it attention cuz it just it you're just rewarding it what we need to do is figure out a way to lower prices on properties what we need is cheap food we need the pricing on food to be as cheap as possible need the prices on property to be cheap so what I'm thinking to stop to solve that I'm thinking what if we were to create a bond what we were to create like a special thing right about basically help give give give everybody give people everyday people an opportunity to basically buy a house so basically cutting the prices in half right and give and give it it's only a certain type of thing that's only allowed for everyday people for the everyday people for the people and not and called big corporations can't use let use it what I'm suggesting we do is give like give massive loopholes for everyday people but bar and control property it's limit them at property but but like the likes of Blackrock the crop price Warhouse Cooper TSB and all these banks in Britain can buy so I've heard rumors that TSB is looking to get into the property market rental property markets which is quite interesting I so else's sir be bought into any new companies lately good strategy the changes in the stock market or the economy for that matter you got anything in pharmaceuticals besides John and Johnson and Johnson there's not much big father I'm investing in it till right now sure if things go away I think is you might be getting a shitload of money off Johnson Johnson soon because of the the sniff yes a district in California basically banned masks in backseat basically banned wearing on masks let's start yeah but it's a district that's always mainly Republican okay okay that makes sense you'd be surprised but there's a lot of Republicans in in California the only thing is so it's not enough to clear the state I do think that California is not big it should be split into two states I'm saying like it should be the north and the east of California one side we should do north of California and east of California and split it down the middle and basically one I personally think that should be it give more delicate seats but remember give more opportunities but not to mention it might be a thing that it might give over can I think all the all the side with Ellie I think everything to do with Ellie and Cupertino should be Cupertino LA California Cupertino all of that should be under one state and the rest of it should be the number let San Francisco I kind of like the north -south California divide yeah well I think in San Francisco part of California oh yeah it's a famous coastal city of California why can't we make that and why can't we make that and it surrounds areas its own state I don't think it's big I don't think it's big enough to be its own state I think it'll be as close as Rhode Island or Delaware it's it's the smallest area let's go but I'm saying the Bay Area maybe California big you know yeah I think I think San Francisco Bay and other neighboring neighborhoods that I think that should be enough to it for it to become its own stuff yeah it could be the next Washington DC what do you mean a shithole well yes but it's also like a district that's predominantly Democrats Washington DC ever since the u .s.
Real Estate Coaching Radio
A highlight from Real Estate Agents: 6 Top Income Destroying, Time Wasting Mistakes
"Welcome to Real Estate Coaching Radio, starring award -winning real estate coaches and number one international bestselling authors, Tim and Julie Harris. This is the number one daily radio show for realtors looking for a no BS, authentic, real time coaching experience. What's really working in today's market, how to generate more leads, make more money and have more time for what you love in your life. And now your hosts, Tim and Julie Harris. Three, two, one and Julie Harris. We are back. And today we're going to be talking about six of the worst income wrecking mistakes agents are making in today's market. But before we get to the first point, I think you have a really great story from our friend in LA, Federico. Yes. Who is not making the deal wrecking mistakes. In fact, this story, I hope the listeners pay attention because it's going to wind a whole bunch of things together. That's right. So we're starting off by telling you the story of what happens if you don't make six of the income wrecking mistakes with this story. And then we're going to get into the weeds as far as what you need to be avoiding. That's right. Okay. So this is a text from Federico who lives and sells in Los Angeles. He says, hi, Julie. This is hot off the presses right from maybe a couple of days ago. Federico says, I just finished showing clients a new construction community while the build rep was showing us the model, a lady walked in and asked if she could listen in on the build reps presentation. She communicated that she and her husband were looking to downsize and was asking the builder how the financing would work. Okay. So let's stop just for a second. How many of you listening in Los Angeles believe that there's no new construction around? We could just start with that point, but moving forward, uh, during that conversation, I asked her what her situation was and asked if she needed the funds from the sale of her property in order to close on the one she might be looking at. That led to the build rep stating that they would only finance her if her current home was in escrow. So there's a lot to that too. Which by the way, that's probably the build rep not really knowing anything about how to, you know, sell a house using financing because the reality of it is, is the builder wasn't actually using their own money. They were using a mortgage broker and she probably still could have worked that deal, but she was looking for the easier deals of people that had no home sale contingency. That's right. And we're using kind of a lame objection handler. No, you can't do that. Exactly. Which positions our friend Federico listening. That's right. Now, when the build rep exited the room, she thanked me for helping her articulate her points. This is the walk -in potential buyer and asked if I could email her all the information for the new build to which I responded that I was the agent for the other couple in the room, but that I would be happy to help her. That led me to, led me to asking her to, uh, how soon she needed to go on the market. When she responded, uh, we are still decluttering. I don't know where to start or how it all works. I asked her where the home was and what they were asking and asked when I could stop by and see it since I may already have someone. How many of you guys would have gone for the appointment right then and there? Think about that. She answered, that sounds great. We need to declutter first. So I won't, it won't be possible until at least later next month. Let me also work on my husband as far as the new purchase goes and then we can schedule an exact date for you to come by. I got her contact information. Another mistake that agents sometimes fall into. I got her contact information and stopped the conversation since I did not want to be rude in front of my existing clients there. When I left the showing, I called this lady. There's the immediate fallback, uh, follow up. I called this lady back to continue the conversation and to schedule a tentative day and time to go look at the property. She said that she and her husband will be going on a short trip and that we can circle back after my trip. We'll only be gone for a week. During the call, she asked me what commission I would charge. By the way, people don't ask that if they're not serious, do they? Okay. She asked about my commission to which I said, that's a great question. I actually have a flexible fee. What's the best email for you so I can send you a little bit about me and my team and about how we work. That'd be the pre listing package. That way when we meet at the house, we can focus on the items that are most important to you. Also part of the script you learned in premier coaching. It's a textbook. Totally 5 ,000 % textbook. She gave me her email, thanked me for helping her while at the new construction and expressed that she was excited to have me come by their house. There you have it. Now certainly by the way, dad, on what you said with regards to the people asking about commission that quick, 99 % of the time when they ask out of the gates like that, it's because they've got another agent in their back pocket, which it probably isn't a professional agent in the sense that maybe it's somebody they just know as their neighbor or uncle Bob who basically lists the house every thousand years or something like that, who will probably do it for free. That type of question was that the agent, I'm sorry, the seller was looking for a reason to take uncle Bob out of the equation because she really liked Federico and wanted to do business with him. Most importantly though, to your point, he used the scripts that we teach these guys to use in premier coaching and that was one of the obvious scripts that we use that you learn when you're presenting the pre -listening pack and the listening presentation. All this was woven together and what we're trying to express to all of you, so hopefully you're all understanding, is there's opportunity everywhere. You just have to go where the opportunity is and quit waiting for the opportunity to come to you. Which leads us, Julie, perfectly into point number one and remember guys, these are the top six income killing mistakes that agents are making now and frankly in a lot of cases have normalized. That's right. So point number one or mistake number one, and we're also going to have some action steps how to fix these problems ASAP. Mistake number one, playing the waiting game, waiting for the market to crash, waiting for interest rates to come down, waiting for inventory. Waiting doesn't get transactions into your pipeline, nor does it help your clients and prospects to achieve their goals. You must take control of your day, your week, your month, your quarter, and your year in order to defeat the waiting game. Say this at least 10 times, if it's meant to be, it's up to me, and then take control. We're going to give you some action steps here. All right, so first action step on this mistake, accept the fact that there are zero indicators that the market's going to crash. Zero. Remove it from your head. While there are some price ranges in some markets this year where it's set to, I'm sorry, where there are some price reductions is what that should say in some markets, this year is set to close with between five and 9 % increase in home values. I wonder how many people actually know that. I mean, with all these headlines that are supposed to basically make you think there's a housing crash, do you all know that real estate in the mainland United States is increased in value by at least 5%, in some cases around 10 % year over year? So yes, despite the headlines about prices falling, home values have still increased. That's right. Now, low inventory, stable demand, lots of new construction, and rising prices are not indicators of a housing crash. Those things do not exist in a housing crash. Now, if any of that changes, you can hear about it here, we'll let you know. So it's important that we remind them that we are at, what, a 20 or 30 year low for the number of mortgages that are in any sort of distress? Yes. It's like less than 3 %? It's less than 3%, a historic low, and that includes all of the forbearances and things that happened around COVID. That's all baked in at this point. Do you remember all the people that were, you know, of course, these real estate prognosticators were trying to sell you lists on how to get into REOs and all this other stuff? How they were saying, oh, you wait until all those people on mortgage forbearance, all those COVID mortgage forbearances, those houses are all going to default. None of them defaulted, did they? You see how there are some people, guys, who only think that they can make money, only think they can help people when the market's going one particular direction. So what they do is they wait around and hope and pray that the sky falls so that they can be right. And that is, I suppose, a business model. But the reality of it is you can help people make money no matter what direction the market is going. You don't just have to wait for the direction that it's been going. For example, a lot of you, to Julie's point, were waiting around for their interest rates to lower, waiting around for the mortgage stuff to clear, become easier, inventory to increase. Stop waiting around. There's inventory everywhere. It's not just where it's like what Federico discovered. It's hidden, in essence. You have to go to where it's at. You have to go to where the market opportunity is. Stop waiting for the market opportunity to show up on your computer screen. Yes. And when you go to new construction where he went, especially in those price ranges, go where the buyers are looking. You will also find listings. That's right. OK. So again, we're back to the waiting game. So you said that. So we have to drill down. Because I always have to remind myself and you that we have people that are maybe listening to us for the first time ever. And yes, this is the number one Listen To Dilly podcast for real estate professionals in the United States. Tens of thousands of people downloading it. But for the one person that's discovered this for the first time, defining what Julie just said, if you're going to, as Federico did, go look, essentially show buyers or go to a new construction area where the new construction is, say, $800 to, say, on up, chances are the person purchasing one of those new construction homes, they're going to have a house to sell. So that means that probably realistically 90 % of the buyers, air quoting here, that are interested in new construction actually also are sellers. But how many of you think like that? How many of you think buyer or seller? You can't be both. Always assume that your buyer is actually a seller and where you focus your energy is on the listing side of things, because that's what's going to be the juggernaut to them moving forward with any, you know, like they're not going to buy anything but to sell the home most likely. So you can't, if you just focus on the buy side of the conversation, you're never going to get to where the real opportunity is on the list side. Once you have the listing, you will obviously sell that house, well, we've done studies on this, you'll sell an average of six other houses off one listing. With a buyer, you will sell a buyer a house. So open your mind to the opportunities that are all around you. Stop thinking and stop sitting around waiting for, you know, something to change. You're the change that needs to happen if you're not liking your, you know, your project, your your momentum right now into the new market. Yes. And you uncovered another mistake, which is assuming that, you know, it's just it's another buyer. I already am up to my eyeballs and buyers and there's no inventory. So why would I want another buyer? You're missing the point. Buyers bring listings and in those price ranges in the right range, you can get buyers who have a listing that are less expensive than the new construction and more expensive than the new construction downsizing. You can actually work both ends of that. Well, it's a frustrating it's frankly the wrong way to go about it. If you're trying to sell a buyer a house and try to find them the right house, the perfect house, all the rest of it, yet they have a house to sell. I'll give you a little advanced coaching here. None of them are going to emotionally commit to purchasing something unless they happen to have the cash to pay for it, which is unlikely. You know, they're not going to have the cash without the sale of their current home. So they won't emotionally commit to anything until at least their first their existing home is listed for sale, let alone in contract. So this is the type of, you know, thinking you need to adjust towards and realizing that the best opportunity is always going to be on the listing side of the business. That's right. So here's the thing back to a point or mistake. Number one, waiting around. Well, what about interest rates? Interest rates will eventually get lower, but are not likely to go below five and a half to six and a half percent, maybe even for the rest of your career. What we just went through is not the norm. So stop wishing for the old market and embrace the new market. Now, that said, there was an interesting there are some political hubbub that's floating around about the fact that, you know, different politicians are starting to lobby for the idea that there's going to be I told you about this. I heard that crazy permanent 30 year mortgages at three percent, which I mean, it sounds great, right? Even if it were four percent, it would be pretty interesting. Well, yeah, they're going to sell like 100 year bonds and finance it and the whole thing and that could stimulate something. Oh, my gosh. But it's also going to well, so let's think about this. You're going to massively increase demand. And what that's what is that going to do to the cost of real estate as well as inventory available? Right. So you might have a low interest rate, but, you know, the four hundred thousand dollar house you're interested in buying is now worth two million. So anyway, I would circle the wagons back probably to new construction if that happens. We'll see. We'll see. We'll monitor that. OK, so the weighting gain. Learn about several ways to achieve a lower rate and a lower payment. What rates are higher than a lot of people want? Refer to last week's podcast about three ways to achieve lower mortgage interest rates. Learn about what the builders are doing. Many new home loans are closing today in our times where rates are over seven. The new construction loans are closing the mid five, five and a half range right now. So take action to find out where in your market is that actually happening? All right. So mistake number two, there was a lot wrapped up in number one, number two, expecting your buyers to send you what they want to look at versus finding the right homes for them yourself. We've done so many podcasts. I know, but this is such a mistake. You know, yes, we know that buyers can find listings online. There's five million different resources. But what happens when they take them to you? Isn't it already in contract? Aren't there already multiple bids? And then you believe there's nothing and you wait for them to go discover something. It is not their job to find something. And furthermore, well, let me get in my points. I probably talked about this. So get and use the buyer presentation, which drills down on specifically what your buyer clients desire in their next home. That can be a mistake is not knowing the specifics. What is a deal maker and what's a deal killer? Are both people on the same page? If you're working with a couple, can you handle objections like I want to wait for rates to come down or prices to come down or both? We talked about that previously. Now, once you know what they need, that they are motivated and they're qualified, it is your job to find them the right home. Think out of the box. Refer to our podcast series about how to find inventory. So, for example, consider changing the type of property, single family to maybe a town home or a condo or vice versa. And the price range, in fact, sometimes going a little bit down market can actually find good alternatives, expanding the geographic search or looking at new construction. And there's a counterpoint here. I've been working on this with coaching clients, OK, which is when a buyer does send you that magic listing. I got to see that. They're really juiced up about it. And that's the only thing they sent you today. OK, so why that one versus everything else that they saw? Ask them why that one and then have two or three backup houses set up. You can always cancel showing appointments. Right. Because what if they're wrong? What if the MLS pictures didn't have the power tower in the backyard? Have another plan. You have a showing appointment. Go sell something. Does that make sense? It does, of course. But I mean, I just we could talk forever about this point because there are so many different places where they can go and look for homes that are officially for sale. But really, I was thinking if I are coaching somebody right now, this you're gearing a lot of your points towards too many buyers, basically. Yeah. And your last point, I really like because you're in essence saying, well, make make it so that the buyers are working with because there's never a true have to buy buyer. There's always want to buy buyers. In other words, there's never a buyer. There's buyers will always change their mind. That's the problem. They're always going to say, I'll wait till next year to raise the fall, wait for pigs to fly, whatever it's going to be. Whereas if you're focusing on a listing, the sellers actually have to sell usually for financial reasons or, you know, whatever it just overall right now, obviously you're going to make more money and have more leverage and freedom if you're focused on being a listing agent. So what would happen if you decided to actually become a coaching client, actually follow our system, actually build up to your magic number of listings, which for many of you is maybe five or seven listings, sometimes depending on your price point, might only be three. And the only buyers you work with are those are the sellers that want to buy something. In other words, stop working with buyers that don't actually have homes to sell. Start valuing your time more and you'll get far better results. But it's also going to force you to become a far better listing agent, far better, you know, proactively generated for the sake of listings. And you're going to get vastly better at prequalifying because you're going to be, guess what, choosing who you're going to work with. So if you're finding yourself emotionally and financially burning it at both ends, it's probably because you just don't have any standards. It's probably because you're working with just about anybody. You're willing to pay referral fees. You're buying all your buyer leads. You're not really running a business, guys, in the sake that, you know, you're going to have any kind of, frankly, security going forward. So really pivot your thinking and ask yourself, would I rather be a really amazingly strong listing agent or buyer's agent? Every single one of you want to focus on being a listing agent in a lot of ways. You have to kind of choose because the buyers will suck up all your energy and your time. Now, if you want to transition from being one to the other, go back to the fact that, you know, you need to prequalify better. You need to actually ask those buyers if they have homes to sell. Depending on the price point, you're going to discover that most of them do. And then guess what you do? You pivot and focus on the listing side of it because that's when you're going to create the leverage. Joining our premier coaching program is free. The link to join is below, along with all the notes from today's show. So just scroll below and you'll see if it's on YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, it doesn't matter where. Scroll down their notes for today's show. Yes, Julie and I create outlines for every single podcast we do. For you. We do it so you guys can go back and you can read what we said. That way you can actually implement what we're asking and suggesting that you do. And while you're there, do join premier coaching. It costs you nothing. The link is right there below. Or you can just, frankly, go to premier coaching dot com or text the word premier to 47372. All right, Julie, let's roll up to mistake number three. Mistake number three. Yep. All right. Not having enough leads in the first place. Speaking of lead generation, if you're struggling with lead generation, it's time to get some help before it's too late. Now, more than ever, it's critical that you generate more leads than you think you need in order to do the business you need to do. To your point that no buyer ever actually has to buy. So you have to overdo your lead generation so that you can find those listing leads in particular. Well, if you want to sell, for example, if you want to sell 10 houses in the next six months or maybe it's the next 60 days or next 30 days. And normally, let's say you are you know, let's assume that you're somewhat efficient and you know, you have a ratio. Let's say, for example, if you have 10, well, let's say you have six seller leads, you know that statistically three or four of those are going to list with you in the next 30 to 60 days. You're going to need to double that in a market like this because people are there's going to be a lot of a lot of headwinds that you're not necessarily going to be able to control, mostly with lack of inventory. So you're going to have to pace out your expectations and increase the number of contacts and increase the number of leads you're working with. But it always goes back to really drilling down the leads you are working with. Otherwise, what you're going to quickly discover is that you have hundreds, if not thousands of unqualified, unmotivated, quote unquote, leads, and none of them are doing transactions with you. And why? Because you're not taking the time to go in there and prequalify them. If you're one of these agents who have falsely believed that the way to win this game is by having massive amounts of leads, I challenge you to do this. Go in, grab our seller prequalification script or our buyer prequalification script, which turns into the seller prequalification script, and call every single one of your leads. You'll discover many things. Number one, the ones you've been dripping on for a long period of time. Some of them don't even know why you're messaging them or have never even seen your messages, let alone know who you are. Number two, some of them already transacted months ago, but you didn't call them. So they didn't transact with you. Number three, you're going to find people that are actually motivated and they're waiting for you to call. You've been treating them like a buyer and sending them home buyer tips and all the rest of it through your drip campaigns. But now because you have them on the phone, they'll actually commit to working with you. You've got to stop being passive with your life, but especially with your lead generation. Well put. So that all goes back to not having enough leads in the first place. So sign up for Premier Coaching with our Harris certified coaches because they're going to start by asking some specific questions like, where did your past five transactions come from? Was it luck and hopium or did you connect with those clients through a proven system or strategy? If it was a proven system or strategy, why did you stop doing it? How many leads do you actually have in your pipeline? To your point, what your story, you were just saying, what I was thinking is a lot of agents think that they're leads, but they're just contacts. They're just people in your database. Why are you calling them leads? You don't know if they're a lead or not because you're not talking to them. Now you also might have a lead conversion issue versus a lead generation issue. That's something that the coaches drill down on. Where are you spending money to generate buyer and listing leads and what is that conversion ratio and how many contacts are you actually making daily where you're speaking with a decision -making adult about real estate? That's just the beginning of great coaching questions to drill down on why you might not have enough leads or appointments. Well, where you're spending money to generate buyer and listing leads. I mean, obviously it was assumptive, right? In other words, she's not suggesting you spend money to generate buyer and seller listing leads. Uh, but she's suggesting that you actually go in and question, frankly, uh, whether or not that money that you're spending to generate leads from those sources actually makes any sense because we know you're doing it.
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep377: Follow This Principle To Start A Show Even If Youre Busy - Rasean Hyligar
"If anybody's thinking of starting a podcast or just me personally, when I started it off, I understood the first one's going to suck. Check out episodes like the first episode, the second episode, you'll see massive difference between when I started to where I am now. And the only way you're going to get there and really find your own personal style is by repetition. Most hosts never achieve the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. Quick disclaimer, the audio quality in this episode, at least on my end, is subpar. It's below average. It's not what I normally produce, but it was really good content with Rashaan. And so I still wanted to produce it. I made a mistake. I made a mistake by not following through with my checklist, which actually, if you check on the previous episode right before this, it's all about checklists. And I gave you 10, 11, 12, 13 options, ideas that could be on your checklist. So I want you to definitely check that last episode out. I think you're going to get value. And I hope that you'll give me some grace, some forgiveness that I made a mistake even after 900 -ish episodes that I published that I still somehow forgot to use the correct microphone. When I was recording this episode with Rashaan. Let's dive in right now and please give me your grace for how the audio quality on my end sounds. A lot of good content. Here we go. What's up, podcaster? It's your host, Adam A. Adams. And today we are with Rashaan Heilinger. And we're going to be talking a little bit about his podcast, his podcast journey, where he is. And if you're listening and you've got a podcast or you're thinking about starting a podcast and you're working full time, now would be a really good time to check into the episode because Rashaan is actually, he's got his own business started while working full time as an engineer. And he launched his podcast. I mean, he's put out over a hundred episodes. Rashaan, when did you start it again? When did you launch the podcast? I started my podcast in November of 2020. So a little bit into the pandemic. Oh yeah, that's right. Just a few months after. What happened for you to make the decision? I've got a couple of like follow up questions with that. So just think through this. You probably had a full time job. You didn't start the podcast right away. So what I'm curious about and what the listener might be curious about is how long had you been thinking about starting a podcast? How long had you had your side hustle business, coaching and mentoring entrepreneur men? Could you give us that story? Like why six months in a pandemic? Why not before and why not right at the pandemic? So the idea for the podcast started back when I was in college, right? But the idea for podcasting came a little bit obviously before the actual podcast was launched. And the idea was that I wanted to provide impact and provide value to a lot of people. Since growing up, I had a lot of advice given to me from my parents, from mentors, from different kinds of instructors, whether it was in my martial arts journeys or anything of that nature. I had a lot of advice and a lot of good tactical tips that were given to me. And I said, you know what? This is fantastic information. And I want to give this back to a bunch of people who are ready to be held accountable for the choices that they make. They know that their life is fully their control. They need to take a grasp of life by the horns and really, really strive to actually do what they want to do in their life. Whatever that may look like for you. Let's say you want to make a ton of money. You want to get to a certain body fat percentage. You want to maybe be the best public speaker, whatever that goal is for you. My goal is to say, let me give some tactical tips to be able to start you on that journey to say, okay, you have this goal. Let's break it down to the more minutia. What do you have to do on the day to day to get you up to that? And so thinking about how I wanted to start the podcast, the idea for that came around the January, February ish timeframe, same year 2020. So before being shut down in March, okay. You said the idea came when you were in college, put a date on that. When do you think you got that idea? So the idea I would say came maybe right around my winter break of college. Since when I started the podcast, I was still in college. I've since graduated now, but it started around December 2019 ish. I would put right around there. And then January, February, you're graduating. I graduated in may of 2021. Okay. And when did you start your engineering job as a systems engineer? I started that in February last year, February, 2022. All right. So you launched a business and a podcast while graduating college. Right. And at the end of graduating college with an engineering degree. Yeah. A lot of homework. Where are you working to? Did you have like a job while going to school? I did. Yes. So we did a couple of jobs. I worked first as a lab technician. Well, I don't know how far back you want to go. Yeah. How about from December of 19? Like were you working at that time? December of 19? Yes. I was working as a laboratory technician. I was working contracted there and I was working in their microbiology portion of the facility. So I worked there for a couple of years. From there, I moved over to becoming an engineering lab technician at a different company where I worked there for about seven or eight months or so. And then after that, I saw an opening for a full -time position at that company. And then I said, you know what? Let's do it. And so I put in my resume, went through the whole application process, yada, yada, yada. And now here we are. I'm still in that position right now. Okay. And what came first? The chicken or the egg? Okay. What I mean is did your business start or did your podcast start? Like you had an idea that you wanted to help people. And so did you launch a business? And then later you're like, Oh, a podcast would be helpful to add, or did you have a podcast and you're like, Ooh, maybe I should do a business or how did that go? Actually the latter, because a lot of people actually start their business first and then see podcasts as the marketing channel for that. I'm actually like the minority. When I figured I was actually flipped it because my mentality the entire time was I just want to give back a bunch of value to people. And I just want to be able to give, give, give, give, give. And then eventually I started giving a lot of that. And then people started asking me for more advice, whether it be Instagram, whether it be on LinkedIn, whether it be in person. And they said, Hey, I have a question about this. I have a question about that. And I'll say, okay, cool. And we could do that. And then I figured, you know what? A lot of people are asking me for help. I can probably build some kind of a business around this. Right. So that's what I started saying. Let me go ahead, launch into start working on my coaching program. And so that's where we are now today. So started from podcast, migrated that now into the business. And now it's funny because now we're starting to do that switch back where now it's going to start becoming more focused on the business. And then the podcast will now start becoming more of like a marketing thing. However, not say that the podcast will change in terms of the value that's given or anything like that. Cause I believe in being fully transparent, keeping that as free as possible valuable tactical evidence on that every single episode, as we call it, the fluff free guarantee. So I promise to keep it a hundred percent there and keep it actionable. So every time people listen to an episode, they say, Oh, I can write down this, or I could take down this. I can implement that. So that's not going to change at all. However, it would still be some extra information for people to say, Hey, if you want more information, I do have a program. I have some questions that are stemming from people that have a decent amount of money where money is not a big stress. And then there are others where it's like, I really, really have to be careful here because I don't want to spend too much on this.
Level After Next With Katie Barnett
Dr. Victor Manzo's Unconventional Path From Chiropractor to Success Guru
"Right, we have Victor Manzo here. I'm so excited. One, because he's Italian and that awesome. is And two, because I have to tell you the weirdest thing, right? When I saw that you were on my calendar, I was like, I feel like I know this guy. And then I went to your website and I was like, yeah, I totally feel like I know this guy, but I don't think I know you at all. But it was just like this instant. I think this is going to be a good one. So I'm really excited. I have not gotten to watch your entire billionaire success formula intro, but I did get to watch some of it and I'm excited to share that with people. I'm excited to pick your brain. I don't know if you've listened to any of my podcasts, but it might get weird because I just, I want to know all the things, but okay, Victor, give us a little bit of your background and what brought you to this point, because I know you've done a lot of things and you have worked through some different businesses and you've created the success formula that has been proven. So I have a lot of questions about that, but give us the background. Who are you? Yeah, I started out as a chiropractor. Never had intentions on being a chiropractor. It's just one of those things in life. In the profession, we always say chiropractic finds us unless you're like, most of the time you have a story or something that intrigued you. And that's kind of what happened to me. Quick backstory. My mom's a fitness instructor and yoga instructor. She's been doing this now for 38 years. She still does both of those at this time. I think she's almost 67. And it's one of those things where I saw the definition of health from nutrition, exercise. She was juicing, taking smoothies, all this stuff. And I just saw this all my life. And so I thought, okay, that's what health is. So at 16, I started studying nutrition. I started working out at 13 years old. I was just so committed to be like, okay, I want to be as healthy as possible. So I'm going to do all these things. At 19, I went to go to Arizona State for school and I ended up being on the club. I ended up getting on the rugby team, their club team. And so talk about taking fitness to a whole nother level. What was puzzling for me at the time is my health kept declining every month. And there's new things coming up, acne on my back. No matter how much I slept, I didn't have it. I was exhausted. I couldn't think straight, just a bunch of different things. But long story short, in the middle of the summer, when I went back, my mom suggested to go see Dr. Frank, who was a chiropractor used to see. And that's when my life changed. And I was so intrigued by it that I decided to skip, forget going to computers, studying computers. I was going to go into chiropractic and I went to business school, back to Chicago and then so forth. That was my journey. And then I obviously went to chiropractic school, came out. But it's one of those things where I've always was interested in the mind. I've always been interested in the deeper elements of life. I used to be made fun of like, you always want to talk about deep stuff. I'm like, well, what else is there to talk about? That makes me feel good. And there came a point when I was in chiropractic school, I started studying energy medicine, not at the school, but outside of it, energy healing and all these things. I want to understand the depth of healing. I want to understand the depths of life. And that was a preface. I didn't use that stuff when I came out of school. I was practicing chiropractic and doing that stuff. But it was about five years later where the way we've been conditioned to what success is in life and what we think business success is and how a successful chiropractor should be, or just business owners, how they should be successful. I think it's skewed in a way because a lot of people are following the same like, oh, this is what it should be. This is what it should be. Instead of what is it for you? And I started asking myself this question because in five years I hit my financial peak. I did everything the business world was saying, well, not everything, but tons of stuff, self -help, personal development. And I was burned out every four to six months on something that I love to do, which was puzzling. I couldn't understand how I can love and be so passionate about chiropractic. But yet every four to six months, I was exhausted, burned out, didn't have energy at certain points. And so when I made a huge pivot change in my life, I ended up changing the way my office was operated. I started to stop listening to business stuff and start listening and feeling within what I think I should feel like I should do, not think, but feel. And I started to define what success was. I started looking back on my energy stuff that I studied years ago and I was like, okay, I understand universal laws. I understand consciousness. I understand quantum physics. I understand these things and how it works in our lives. I want to study that stuff so I can, now I'm going to start applying it. The heck with everything. I'm going to go all in and just start applying it. My business took a 40 % hit on purpose and I started to apply these principles and a year later, a little over a year later, I was back to where I was financially. I was working 50 % less than what I was doing and I was less stressed and I was just, everything in life was just so much better. And I was like, wow, I'm doing the opposite of what they're telling me to do. And I got the results. So that's what encouraged me to want to start looking at coaching business owners because I felt they needed this. And that was the journey that started. So I started coaching about four years ago and this last year, 2022, is when I went full time into coaching and actually stopped practicing chiropractic for the time being.
Cyber Security Weekly Podcast
A highlight from Episode 377 - Artificial Intelligence and Operational Resiliency
"This is Jane Lo, and I'm at the Global Resiliency Federation office here in Singapore. And with me today, I'm very pleased and very privileged to have Mark Orsi, who is the CEO of GRF or Global Resiliency Federation, all the way from United States of America. So thank you, Mark, for your time today. Thank you for having me. And so Mark will be sharing with us the latest in terms of artificial intelligence, which is causing a lot of excitement nowadays, as well as the operational resiliency framework, which has been developed by GRF over the last year or so. So Mark, you know, give us a brief introduction about yourself and also GRF and what, you know, the organisation does. And I also understand that you're very passionate about AI. So tell us about the history of your career as well. Sure. So I started as an aerospace engineer many, many years ago. And after aerospace, I was in computer science and I was working on computer vision. So it's really been interesting to see the journey until today. But additionally, so the last 15 years or so, I've been in the financial services sector primarily and technology risk and cybersecurity. I worked at Goldman Sachs for about eight years, KPMG for a few years, JP Morgan for a few years. And then in the past four years, I've been at Global Resilience Federation and we're a non -profit. We manage and support 17 different sharing communities. ISACs, which are really information sharing and analysis centres, they're collective defence communities where organisations join together to help protect themselves against the various threats that are out there. And of course, you have your conference later in October, later this year in Texas. Yeah, Austin, Texas, October 11th through 12th. Anybody who's local or who wants to make the journey, please come. We also have an OTI set conference on September 6th coming right up. More local. But yeah, it's an iteration of it, sixth year running. And it's security and third -party risk. So we have practitioners, CISOs, third -party risk practitioners, business resilience practitioners. And we have a whole track on AI security. So we've worked for the last six months with 20 organisations on two papers. One is a CISO guide to AI security and one is a practitioner's guide. So let's start with AI, which is what gets people excited nowadays. So tell us, you've got a great vintage point from America, which is a leader in many ways when it comes to technology and innovations. So what is the conversation like in terms of the business use cases that you see in America? Sure, we're coming from a cybersecurity and resilience perspective. And so I was on a call, it was about a week and a half after ChatGBT was released in November of last year. A hundred different chief information security officers on the call, really all concerned about maybe business forging ahead without really taking any security considerations into play. But also about some of the major strengths that they could, how can we use this for good as well, right? How can we use it to find vulnerabilities? How can we use it to secure our code? So an example is one of the organisations had been using a tool like it to actually rewrite their code base and translate into different language, which added memory management to their code and then translate it back to the original language. And they were also using it then to multiply their developers time by tenfold, because they didn't have to write the test cases and additional code around developers. So there's plenty of benefits to it and there's plenty of risks, right? We need to think about the whole pipeline, whether we have in -house AI models or whether we're using third parties, there's different kinds of risks that we need to consider. There's also been a lot of talk of using AI large language models to do predictive diagnostics in healthcare, right? And GRF, of course, you have more than, what, 20 member organisations? It's 17 different ones, yes, 17. And one of them is Health iSAT, right? So talking to your member communities, do you see a difference in terms of the pace of adoption in terms of using AI? Yeah, absolutely. And so we worked with 20 different organisations, including some healthcare, some manufacturing, some energy and others, to put together a guide on AI security, both the practitioner guide and a CISO guide. And yes, there's different pace of adoption. There's organisations that have been using machine learning and AI for many, many years. And but with the advent of this generative AI, there's just a tremendous amount of concern and the pace of change is much more rapid. It used to be every year you'd have change and now it's every week. There's new things happening. So of course, artificial intelligence is not new in cyber security. How is this latest innovation of using large language models, how is that going to be different in terms of adoption in cyber security? I think you mentioned a few sort of like... I think some of the power of it is that ultimately, if you think about the resource limits that we have, there's always constraints on the number of resources that are available that are cyber focused and cyber educated. And so for us to take the power of some of those large language model generative AI and sort of multiply the efforts of the staff that we have, then we can also meet some of the needs that we have from a resource perspective. Also, I think ultimately we're going to get into very targeted threat intelligence to where it'll be based upon our own assets. So if you're an enterprise and you have specific assets and you have specific threats in your sector, then the intelligence that you're delivered would be very targeted to your organization specifically. So it's going to get much more powerful over time to give you tailored threat intelligence. Do you think that the rate of adoption on the cyber defense side is possibly faster than how the threat actors are adopting... Yeah, I mean, that's a big concern, right? I think probably we'll be behind the curve. All right, okay. I think there was even talk early on about just pausing the pace of developments, making sure that we have the regulatory framework so that we know how to do this ethically and responsibly. So I think from a machine learning perspective, we could be doing very well, but I think from a generative AI perspective, we may be behind the curve a little bit. So I think the complexity of attacks, I think we'll be putting essentially nation -state tools into every threat actor's hands. So I think it's a very sort of concerning few years as we work to try and match the pace of change. You think that is something that is quite realistic that will happen, or is it just kind of like a hype? Because there's some part that human developers or human threat actors are possibly a lot more sophisticated when it comes to developing the malware code. And you can kind of tell the difference between one that's generated by generative AI and one that's written by human developers. I'll give you an example of just a very personal use case. So I was working with my son just a couple of weeks ago, and we found an old Nintendo DS. And so he wanted to run videos on his old Nintendo DS. And so we used ChatGBT to learn how to hack into our Nintendo DS to make it display videos. So he never had any programming experience, but we were able to do this. So this is exactly what I'm like, you know, we can put these tools into everybody's hands. So how do we, you know, we need to be extra vigilant as this change happens. So what do you think is the immediate step that cyber defenders have to take in face of this threat? Well, I think there's a few things. Number one, we need to be moving forward to be using it in the right ways, to be using it from a defender perspective. So if it is helping us to find vulnerabilities quicker, if it's helping us to develop threat intelligence better, that's more tailored towards each individual organization. But also just from security and ethics perspective, there's all sorts of different attacks that can happen to those, whether it's on the input data, whether it's in the model itself, you can embed undetectable backdoors in these models. So if you're using a third party to develop your models, you need to be very concerned and maybe even have multiple models to compare the answers. Now, some people also say, right, let's just get the basics right, right? So for example, we'll get more sophisticated phishing emails, right? So that just means more awareness in terms of how to spot a fake email from a genuine email. So that's kind of like the basics that we need to sort out. Yeah, but it's also addressing all the different aspects of that. You know, I mentioned the models themselves. So protecting the models, protecting the data. You don't want data poisoning. You want to detect and monitor these things because they may evolve over time. And you need to be really concerned about your third parties because every third party is going to be introducing AI. So we talk about an AI bill of materials. So the same as you have a software bill of materials, we want to think about how can we develop an AI bill of materials? So how can you ensure that the training data and the model that's being used, right, how do we know which models we're using and which training data is being used? So if we find an ethical bias or we find some, let's say it was trained on a set of a code that had malware embedded in it or a set of code that had logic bombs in it, you don't want to embed logic bombs in your new code that you're writing by using these tools. So we need to make sure that the training data is clean. For example, let's just take the example of data poisoning, right? So that is perhaps, you know, looking at how you provide access levels to your data set. So it's not any difference from sort of the basic cybersecurity measures, right? Right. It's using some of the same constructs that you have across others. But one of the things that you need to be concerned about too, though, is these are dynamic, some of these are dynamic models. Right now, it's a very static world. We have these models that were trained in, you know, 2021 data, right? But in the near future, these things will be much more dynamic and actually responding to the inputs to change their behavior. So you'll need to be monitoring. Yeah, that's very different. Right, okay. So I think one final question on the copy of AI before we move to operational resilience framework. A lot of people say, right, AI is going to mean, you know, perhaps job losses, right? And how do you see that playing out in the cybersecurity field? So I'm, you know, concerned in general. I studied AI 30 years ago. I was concerned about it then. You know, I thought the first sort of impact would be with self -driving cars and in our transportation industry. I think it turns out that, you know, these models advanced very quickly, maybe quicker than people were expecting. But it's going to take a very long time for us to sort of digest that through all of our business models that we have right now. But I think it's going to multiply our efforts. I think cybersecurity is an industry where we're very resource constrained, where people, there's way more cyber resources are required than we have people. So it'll just multiply our capabilities and maybe meet the needs that we have. So I think that's a very positive thing. Ultimately, I think our economy will be changing in the next decade or two decades in different ways. And I think we can only imagine what those changes will be. Right. Okay. So talking about overcoming some of these challenges, it means like resiliency, right? So that plays into the next topic, operational resilience framework. So tell us what this resiliency means in the context of this framework and perhaps cybersecurity. So back in 2018, there was a paper from the Bank of England. So regulatory guidance on operational resilience and impact tolerance. And so it was really thinking about the potential systemic impacts of bank failures on customers and partners. And so the question was, well, how do we respond to that? What are the things that we need to do to ensure that we can continue to operate our critical services through a crisis, even if it's an impaired state? So we, Trey Moss, who is the CEO of Sheltered Harbor, it was an initiative from FSISAC to help protect consumer data. So if there was a bank failure or a bank disruption, you could still access your bank account information. So it would prevent sort of a run on the bank or this systemic impact from it. So we took that concept and Trey was always thinking, hey, we probably need to do more than just protect this little piece of data. It was in a distributed and immutable way that the different banks and the standard format that different banks could access. We need to also prevent the bank from failing its critical services. So we were working with him, Bill Nelson, who is the CEO of FSISAC for 12 years. And he's our board of directors. Trey and I, we met for about a year to say, well, what should we be doing beyond just protecting this little piece of information? What are those critical services that we need to protect? And we need to make sure that through a crisis they would operate, even if it's an impaired state. So we developed a path to operational resilience. We worked with 100 organizations and financial services regulators to develop a very simple path that was meant really for every industry, not just for financial services. And so it's a path of seven steps, 37 rules. We tried to make it very simple. It's aligned to NIST and ISO standards and extends existing business continuity and disaster recovery type standards and frameworks. It takes a holistic approach and really looking outward instead of inward on saying these are internal business services that we need to keep running. Those we call business critical services. Operations critical are those things that your customers and your partners depend upon. And so making sure that those continue to run through a crisis. If you have a wiperware attack, you have a ransomware attack, you have a data center fire, you want to make sure that your customers' critical services continue to function through that crisis. So take an example of, say, a ransomware attack. So attack ransomware hitting one of these industrial organizations, right? So how would this resiliency framework help, you know, plug some of the gaps? So what's interesting is we've done this very much from an IT focus. We want to extend it to an OT realm as well. So we'll be working with OT ISAC and manufacturing ISAC late this year, early next year, and we'll set up a working group to do that. But actually one of our first scenarios that we put out there, it's, you know, freely downloadable from our website, grf .org, is a scenario that we call it ACME pipeline. And it was essentially a replication of colonial pipeline incident to highlight the benefits of an operational resilient framework approach. And so we looked at, you know, what are those critical services from a pipeline? And it was really just delivering petroleum. So there are a bunch of regulatory responses they have to have. There's payroll, there's all these different systems. When it comes to what do you actually deliver to your customers and your business partners, it was just delivery of petroleum. So making sure that they could deliver petroleum through that crisis, if they had a ransomware attack or a wipe away attack, what are those things they needed to do to ensure, even if it's an impaired state, how do I deliver that to my high priority customers and my low priority customers and designing so that let's say I could only operate at 80 % capacity. Can I still provide service to my low priority customers or do I need to only provide service to my high priority customers? So understanding at what point do you cut off service or do you are you going to disappoint some people because it's no longer a service to them. Designing that into your system and pre -planning that is part of this framework. Right, yes, yeah. So it's kind of like looking at from a sort of a consequence perspective on the mission factors rather perspective than start from the asset inventory kind of that traditional. It was interesting, I was hearing some of the same language that we were developing over the last two years coming from the OT experts on the panels as well about exactly that, about operating through a crisis, about the mission critical functions. Right, okay. So we just talked about one scenario which is ransomware and you are looking to sort of, I guess, expand to different types of scenarios to try to help organizations assess where they are in terms of their maturity when it comes to resiliency, yes? Yeah, so it really doesn't matter what the type of attack is, right? And also I think one of the concerns, we've been very sort of IT focused and very much we talked about the data and making sure that it's distributed and immutable, but also from a service perspective. So you want to make sure that you can deliver those services. That's right. Whether it includes manpower or whether it includes just technology. So that's very important. So what are the next steps then? So you say that the efforts started in 2019, yes? There's two active working groups right now. So one is we're developing a maturity model. We're going to release the next iteration in October of this year at our conference, which is in Austin, Texas. So not local. But so the next iteration will come with a maturity model, some of the comments that we've received from multiple industries, and we're still actively seeking, we want to make sure it's a cross -industry approach. We also have another working group focused on a scenario that's in the financial sector. So in ACH payments network disruption, ACH is, you know, domestic cash payments are made through this ACH network, and it's $76 trillion a year. So it's a very significant system. And so what would a disruption like that, how would it impact banks? And how should we be thinking about operational resilience in that scenario? So working through that, we'll probably do an exercise in November of this year, which would be open to many banks to have that discussion. So we'll be looking at the next steps. Like I mentioned, we'll be looking to extend the framework to OT, ICS concerns. And we'll be looking to, you know, develop the third iteration and additional scenarios. So what is the first thing that organizations have to do if they want to adopt your framework? So they can go to our website now and freely download it. It's available. They can actually review it and give feedback. But also think about how they can use it in their organizations, right? What some in major banks, they're using it just to develop training materials. So organizations, they're different business units across the globe regionally, and different business units can consider operational resilience and how they work. So I think it's a really good learning tool. And ultimately, as they implement it, the first steps are, number one, we build it upon the baseline of NIST and ISO standards. IDLE, change management, making sure they have core standards, core practices in place, core controls, and then naming an operational resilience executive. So really getting somebody who has visibility across business and technology. Yeah, a champion of it, who can sustain it through organizational change, right? Who can really have some power and authority to implement it. That's really important. And then you can start walking through the framework and doing the things that are necessary. It'll take investment, it'll take some work to really become more resilient. And so we're working on the maturity model as well, so people can evaluate sort of where they are and where they think they might have gaps. Can they participate in one of your working groups so that they can assess to see how they can practically use it? Yeah, they can contact me. No, happy to have that. Happy to have people reach out to me and contact us. Again, our website, grf .org .org. And yeah, we're continuing to develop new working groups and new sector focal points. Our goal is to make the whole ecosystem more resilient, to figure out how organizations can do that and to contribute to security and resilience in any way that we can. So this is one way to do that. Possibly there's a way to incorporate AI element, the latest generative AI element. I would love it, right? I love it. I mean, that's a real passion of mine from many years ago. So it's great to kind of see it finally come into play. And we just have to address it in the right way and with the right security concerns. So, well, Mark, thank you so much for your time today to talk to us about generative AI, as well as operational resiliency framework that GRF is developing. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Jane.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1403: This Will Send Bitcoin to $1,000,000 - Max Keiser
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis, as well as breaking news just in. The former SEC and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Norman Reed, announced as the new CEO of Binance US? Like, what? Serious? We'll also be discussing the latest from Max Kaiser, who recently shared, we helped boost El Salvador's bonds 90 % this year. We can help Javier Malay escape the IMF, central banking terrorist, and get Argentina's economy rocking. Hope to be landing in Buenos Aires soon. Let's go. He also says that President Bukele plus Bitcoin have reinvented the nation state. Governance is being redefined in the Bitcoin age. A true meritocracy and universal economic freedom is rising in El Salvador. Socialist ideas are on their deathbed. Can the Bukele model of Bukelenomics be exported to another country? We will go to Argentina and discuss this with Javier Malay. Can't freaking wait. Also breaking news, Mark Cuban loses $870 ,000 worth of Ethereum in his MetaMask hot wallet with a hack. Rough. Also in today's show, Gemini legal team accuses DCG, the digital currency group of gaslighting Genesis creditors. We'll also be discussing BitGo and Swan unveil plans for a Bitcoin -only trust company. That's right, the trust company will target institutional investors in the United States as asset managers line up for the Bitcoin spot ETF. Send it. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin price all -time high will precede the 2024 halving according to this latest prediction by Bitcoin. Quitting him here, no, Bitcoin is not going to top before the halving. Yes, it is going to reach a new all -time high before the halving. No, Bitcoin is not going to 160 ,000 because the magnitude of every pullback is large. This means it will peak after the halving in 2024. And yes, the target price is around $250 ,000 per Bitcoin. I'll also be sharing the latest predictions from Max Keiser with the Bitcoin price action I recently transcribed his most recent interviews. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Again, that's cryptonewsalerts .net. Welcome everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1403. I'm your host JV, and it is stat stacking Saturday. So let's get it. It's September 16th. So you already know we're halfway through the September before October. So let's bring it. Let's start with our market watch. As you can see here on the screen, we're back in the green. Bitcoin up a half a percent for the day trading back above 26 ,500. We also have Ether trading above 1600. And checking out coinmarketcap .com, we're sitting just above that trillion dollar milestone with roughly 22 billion in volume in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin dominance is 48 .9%, and the Ether dominance is 18 .6%. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, TonCoin leading the pack up 17 .5 % trading at $2 .42, followed by ThorChain up 9 .5%, trading at $1 .91, followed by Flow up 8 .5%, trading just above 46 cents. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week, we have a sea of green, which is a beautiful omen for the altcoin market. We have coins such as TonFlow, Rune, and Ave all pretty up between anywhere from 8 to 13%. And yeah, so there you have it. How many of you are currently bullish on the king crypto, and how many of you are anticipating a further dip? Let me know your insights. And at the end of the show, I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud as we do each and every day in the Q &A session. Now, let's dive into some technical analysis from Glassnode, one of my favorite analytics platform. The past few days have been relatively positive for the price action for the king crypto, which has been increasing since Tuesday, September 12th. At the time, Bitcoin is sitting just above 25 ,600. Now in this prediction, the co -founder of the popular crypto analytics resource, Glassnode, outlined that the US CPI jumped by 0 .6%, which led to some fluctuations of the Bitcoin price. And indeed, the core CPI, which excludes more volatile sectors such as food and energy by design, has noted a yearly increase of 4 .3%. But interestingly, the CPI itself clocked in at 3 .7%, while the estimations were for it to be 3 .6%. So initially, the news didn't really have any impact on the price, which beyond the expected initial turbulence, settled at where it was trading just before that. So here's some price predictions coming from the Glassnode co -founder. He pointed out that crypto reclaimed the support above 26 ,000 and is now eyeing a potential break beyond 27 ,000. This would help it escape a multi -week range. He went on to share, risk signals nose dive into the 60s around ,400 27 and 28 ,200. But this climb seems poised as a step before tackling the psychological barrier at $30 ,000. So there you have it. Let me know if you agree or disagree with the analysts. And are you currently more bullish or bearish on the King crypto for the short term? Please do let me know. And breaking news just came in before I went live. And I'm like, it's hard for me to even accept this, but this is what it says. Former SEC and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Norman Reed, is announced as the new CEO of Binance US. You can't make this stuff up. Folks, what is the SEC doing? Now, Max Kaiser recently tweeted, I'm sure you know, there was a Tucker Carlson interview with the pro Bitcoin presidential candidate of Argentina, who's currently winning the polls for the presidency. And fantastic, almost 400 million views within the first day. Max went on to share, we help boost El Salvador's bonds 90 % this year. Facts. We can help Javier Malay in Argentina escape the IMF central banking terrorists and get Argentina's economy rocking. Hope to be landing in Buenos Aires soon. So the million dollar question, do you think Max Kaiser will orange pill Javier Malay? I sure hope so. He even recently tweeted here, President Bukele plus Bitcoin have reinvented the nation state. Governance is being redefined in the Bitcoin age. A true meritocracy in universal economic freedom is rising in El Salvador. Socialist ideas are on their deathbed. Can the Bukele model of Bukele -nomics be exported to another country? We will go to Argentina and discuss this with Javier Malay. And quoting El Salvador's fearless leader, Bukele, old ideas and institutions crumbled and a new generation is called on to remake the world based on the human right of financial freedom. Preach. Now, Max also shared in regards to this headline, Janet Yellen says Ukraine aid is the best boost for the global economy. Now this is hilarious and also sincere at the same time. Bitcoin monetizes war and violence by being finite and uncomfortable as this ugly, what? Illustrates money monetizes war by violence by turning humans into disposable garbage central bank Ponzi scheme. Preach Max Kaiser. Greatly appreciate all the work you're doing. You're truly doing God's work. You and Stacy's a massive shout out. Now let's discuss the latest with the hack from Mark Cuban. Now this is alarming, but at the same time, it's Meta Mass. I've been telling you guys to stay away from the Meta Mass wallet for quite some time. And also they didn't hack Bitcoin. They hacked Ethereum. I personally don't trust Ethereum or Meta Mass. So interestingly enough, so to read this story, let's break this down. Check this out. Nearly $900 ,000 worth of Ethereum was reportedly drained from one of the hot wallets belonging to investor in Dallas. Mavs owner, Mark Cuban, the man that once said Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and that bananas are more valuable. Yeah, right now, independent blockchain sleuth was the first to spot the hack September 15th at around 8 PM. So that was last night after they highlighted suspicious behavior. What one of Cuban's wallets that the 65 year old had an interacted with for roughly five months as he shared here on X LMAO did Mark Cuban's wallet just get drain wallet inactive for 160 days and all of the assets just moved. And according to the transaction history on Etherscan, several batches of assets such as USD coin, USDC tether, and Lido staked Ether were suddenly withdrawn from the wallet within a 10 minute window. Now adding complexity to the matter, another 2 million worth of USDC was also withdrawn and sent to a different wallet, leading Woz to suspect that Cuban may just be moving some assets around. However, a few hours later, Cuban confirm to DL news that he had gone on metamask for the first time in months and vaguely suggested that the hacker or hackers may have been watching and waiting for the moment to pounce. Cuban added that he had transferred any remaining assets to Coinbase custody, essentially confirming that the $2 million worth of USDC transaction was indeed him. But in terms of the hack, members of the community were quick to point out that the opposed to the hackers watching Cubans activity, he must have done something that led to the security breach. Some suggested that Cuban may have mistakenly signed a malicious transaction while others asserted his private keys were compromised given that the funds were directly transferred out of his wallets. What do you guys personally think chat? Please let me know in the comments below. This is not the first time Cuban has been taken a hit on the crypto market. Back in June of 2021, Cuban Lawson unspecified amount of capital on what he called a rug pull after the algo stable project called iron finance imploded amid a supposed bank run. So there you have it. Mark Cuban has a bad track record in crypto. Just pointing out the obvious fam, how many of you guys think that it was a legitimate hack? Let me know your thoughts or how many of you think he maybe have just moved it around and don't want to claim it. Who knows? I mean, there's infinite possibilities. No one really knows, but I'll be keeping you posted with the latest developments. We all know Mark Cuban is a multi -billionaire. So obviously a $900 ,000 loss is not going to affect him. He's not going to lose any sleep over it. But what if you were to get hacked worth of $900 ,000 of crypto? So again, red alert, be very careful with wallets such as MetaMask. Just saying. Now for the latest between the digital currency group in Gemini with the ongoing saga as it continues, lawyers representing Gemini Trust have pushed back against the plan proposed by DCG for the creditors of Genesis Global in the filing yesterday, September 15th in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District in New York. New York, where you at? The legal team accused DCG of gaslighting Genesis creditors through contrived, misleading and inaccurate assertions and a recovery plan. Now the plan filed in Bankruptcy Court September 13th, three days ago, claimed unsecured creditors could have a 70 to 90 % recovery with a meaningful portion of the recovery in digital currencies, while Gemini earned users would expect an approximately 95 to 110 % recovery for their claims. This seemed like a red flag when I initially read the story. I'm like, how are they going to get back 110 %? Does that make any sense? So now I'm starting to understand maybe they were gaslighting. What are your thoughts, chat? According to the legal team, DCG was attempting to bait the Gemini lenders into accepting the deal that would allow the company to pay less than it allegedly owed. Lawyers called on the firm to significantly improve the terms of the loans provided to Genesis and not use Genesis' bankruptcy proceedings to cover for justifications of the recovery plan, quoting them here, to distract the Genesis creditors from the inconvenient facts of its facially inadequate and inequitable proposal, DCG touts proposed recovery rates that are total mirage, misleading at best and deceptive at worst, said the filing yesterday, September 15th. Make no mistake, Gemini lenders will not actually receive anything close to the real value in terms of proposed recovery rates under the current agreement. In principle, so a bunch of more shenanigans, to say the least. The legal battle involved entanglements with crypto exchange Gemini and DCG over the Gemini Earn program. How many of you have lost crypto from Gemini Earn? I'm curious. Please let me know in the chat, fam. Financed in part by Genesis, Genesis halted withdrawals as we know November of 2022 in the wake of the FTX collapse, citing unprecedented market turmoil at the time and filed for bankruptcy later on in January of this year. According to the court filings by Gemini, Genesis owed more than $3 .5 billion to its top 50 creditors at the time of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The crypto exchange filed the claim in May, aimed at recovering more than $1 .1 billion worth of assets for roughly $232 ,000 Earn users and filed a lawsuit against DCG and their CEO, Barry Silber, in June alleging fraud. Barry was not the only architect and mastermind of the DCG and Genesis fraud against the creditors. He was directly and personally involved in perpetuating it, said Gemini co -founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss back in June. The US SEC filed a civil suit against Gemini and Genesis in January for allegedly selling unregistered securities through the Earn program. The two firms filed a motion to dismiss the case in May, but it is still ongoing at this current time. How do you think this is likely to play out? I just hope that the investors get their money back as they deserve because we all know with lawsuits, the biggest losers are always the investors. The biggest winners are the lawyers and the courts. That's just facts. So we'll see how this plays out as well. And again, they're attacking and going after all of the yield programs for crypto with Gemini Earn being a pretty large one. Why? It undermines the banks, right? If you can earn a five or 10 % yield putting your cryptocurrency on their platform, it basically tells you that why would you even waste your time with fiat currency in your bank when you're losing more than the actual appreciation of interest because the interest is virtually nothing while you're losing 20 % in inflation on an annual basis. It just makes no sense. So it seems if I had to guess, that's why they're attacking all of these yield programs. But what are your thoughts, chat? Please do let me know. I'm going to read those comments out in a little bit. Now let's discuss the latest with Bitcoin Trust. That's right, BitGo and Swan unveiled plans for their Bitcoin -only trust company. This is breaking news as well. The US may soon have a Bitcoin -only trust company according to plans disclosed by BitGo and Swan yesterday, September 15th. The joint venture is pending regulatory approval, the company said in the statement. Now I love the word joint venture because hey, JV, just saying. The forthcoming entity will handle similar activities of a trust company, including Bitcoin custody, administration and management on behalf of its beneficiaries. And according to Corey Clipston, CEO of Swan, the solutions intends to offer Bitcoin custody without the risk of having other altcoins under the same roof. As you know, Swan is Bitcoin -only and they're pretty much anti everything, not Bitcoin. Quoting him here, for years, we have heard from major clients, partners and other Bitcoin companies that they would prefer a Bitcoin -only software and services stack that is focused strictly on the best custody and leverages of Bitcoin's unique features. The companies are in contact with state regulators about the plans, but have yet to file regulatory approval. Clipston told Cointelegraph we're evaluating acquisition options first, he disclosed as he announced here through the Swan Bitcoin team on X. As part of our long -term vision to advance Bitcoin adoption, we're announcing a major step forward for Swan and the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. BitGo and Swan announced plans for USA's first Bitcoin -only trust company. Let's go USA. BitGo offers digital asset security and custody, supporting over 700 cryptos as per its website. And in contrast, Swan's business is fully dedicated to the king crypto, allowing users to only invest in Bitcoin via a one -time and reoccurring purchases, with custody of records held at Fortress Bank and Bakkt, while BitGo acts as a cold storage for Custodian. Now, didn't Fortress Trust just go bankrupt or get acquired by another company? Was it Ripple? You guys let me know in the chat. I know there was something major with Fortress Trust. Now, the new venture will target institutional investors such as asset managers, pension plans, and family offices, along with governments and company treasuries. It will offer cold storage, fraud prevention, anti -money laundering, and know -your -customer protocols, amongst other Bitcoin -related services. Institutional investors in the crypto space are at a fast -growing market in the US, especially as the world's largest asset managers seek regulatory approval, which includes BlackRock, the largest. For a spot Bitcoin ETF, we also have several large Wall Street players offering crypto custody solutions to institutional investors, which include the Bank of New York, Mellon, as well as Deutsche Bank, quoting them here. We believe there is a high likelihood that several ETFs are approved in 2024, and thus a new round of entrants to the Bitcoin market seeking mature, reputable, technology -proficient partners for a range of needs, explained the Swan CEO. The SEC delayed decisions on the spot Bitcoin ETF product. Analysts predict the regulatory regulator may postpone a decision until early 2024 as the deadline fast approaches, quoting them again. Our teams have worked closely together for nearly a year on stronger, qualified custody models. Early in 2023, we recognized the opportunity to establish a Bitcoin -only custodian, combining the unique capabilities of each company and supporting the innovators that will be at the forefront of pushing Bitcoin adoption, noted the CEO of BitGo. So there you have it. I am curious, by a show of hands chat, how many of you have purchased or acquired Bitcoin using Swan Bitcoin, and how many of you are familiar or ever used BitGo? Let me know in the chat. Now let's break down our next breaking story of the day, and that's the Bitcoin halving, which should be on everybody's mind, because it's only six months out, estimated to take place sometime in April of 2024. Now guess what? What if we hit a new all -time high pre -halving, because that's what this prediction suggests. Let's break this baby down, shall we? Bitcoin has a $250 ,000 target for after its next block subsidy halving, but a new all -time high will come sooner. Let me know if you guys agree. That is the latest Bitcoin prediction from BitQuant, the popular social media commentator who sees a rosy future for Bitcoin. In his latest post on X on September 15th, synonymous central banker and Bitcoiner revealed a pre -halving target of 69 ,000. That's what makes this individual interesting. He is a central banker and a Bitcoiner. I didn't even know that was a possible combination, fam, just saying, but he wrote, no, Bitcoin is not going to the top before the halving. Yes, it is going to reach a new all -time high before the halving. Now Bitcoin has just over six months before the halving, the event that cuts the miner rewards, as we know, per block by 50 % every four years. Analysts argue that the resulting emission restrictions have a cathartic impact on the Bitcoin price performance, acting as something of a springboard in advance of Bitcoin seeing new all -time highs. But for BitQuant, the analysts, that alone is not bullish enough. Not only will Bitcoin beat its current record set in 2021, which we all know the current all -time high is 69 ,000, before next April, it'll go on to hit $250 ,000 per Bitcoin after the next halving cycle begins. That's what he says here. No, Bitcoin is not going to 160 ,000 because the magnitude of every pullback is large. This means it will peak after the halving in 2024, and yes, the target price is around 250 ,000, which is outlined right here in the chart. Let me know if you agree or disagree with this crypto analyst, BitQuant. Now, market participants are highly divided when it comes to how the Bitcoin price action will play out into the halving and beyond. Some agree that the higher levels are possible by April, but plenty of conservative voices obviously remain, especially bears, right? Last month, Bitcoin investor and author Jesse Myers dispelled any idea that Bitcoin will be trading at six figures between now and then, and in a subsequent interview, meanwhile, Philby Philby, the co -founder of Trading Suite, decent trader, gave a pre -halving Bitcoin price ceiling of 46 ,000, quoting him here, assuming no Black Swan event, around 35 ,000 by the end of the year, and possibly as high as 46 ,000, sometime pre -halving in quarter one of 2024. So there, you freaking have it. And as he shares here, I'm going to read you his particular post on X coming from Bitcoin. Again, this is the central banker slash Bitcoiner. He says, no, Bitcoin is not going to the top before the halving. Yes, it is going to reach a new all -time high before the halving. No, Bitcoin is not going to 160 ,000 because the magnitude of every pullback is large. This means it will peak after the halving in 2024. And yes, the target price is around $250 ,000 per coin. So there you have it, fam. Again, let me know if you agree or disagree with the analysts and where do you feel the Bitcoin halving, which is around the corner, is likely to take us. As you know, the two most bullish catalysts in the market, Bitcoin halving as well as spot Bitcoin ETF. I hope they both get approved and take place. We already know for certain the halving will take place, but there's a 95 % chance of the spot ETF approval in the United States, according to top ETF analyst, Eric Balchunes of Bloomberg. Now for the moment you have all been waiting for, the latest from Max Kaiser. I recently transcribed, actually today, his most recent interview in Bitcoin price predictions, very powerful words to share. So let's break this down. So first and foremost, he says, the world is a very different place and everyone will say nobody saw it coming, but it is clearly been brewing now for many years. And it's like every single day you can just see the catastrophe inching toward the abyss. You know, it's we're at the zero line preach. He also says it is a global fiat money game and you see different countries where fiat money regimes are collapsing in real time, right? Facts. Argentina, you know, the countries like this or like Lebanon recently had a complete collapse or a central bank collapse. That's right. And inflation is definitely an indication that your fiat money regime is in dire straits and inflation is breaking out in a big way. It is not going to return to where it was before this latest inflation break inflation and the collapse of fiat money is here. Now people are feeling it right now. And the quality of life all over the world is being impacted by it and it's being impacted in the United States. You know, people can't buy a home. People can't afford food. The economy is starting to ramp back up again. So it's playing out right now. And there is nothing that can be done to stop this inflation because the economy is completely out of control. So even the interest on the debt in the United States is now over one trillion dollars. So I think it is the biggest line item on the budget, bigger than the military. What we were told for decades was, oh, you know, it's trickle down economics or what you have, what not. I mean, and he goes on to share with Bitcoin. It's kind of the end of price discovery because everything will be priced in Bitcoin preach. eventually Everything goes to zero against Bitcoin. And so for someone like myself, who has been following this for 40 years, finance markets, technology, Bitcoin is the holy grail. It is the end all. I would say my compatriot in all of this is the one and only Michael Saylor. When you hear Michael Saylor talk, he talks about the aesthetics of Bitcoin, the beauty of Bitcoin. And he speaks about it in a way that I think carries the torch from the Max and Stacey from 2011. He started buying it, I guess, when it was 10 or 12000 a coin or so in 2020 era. So we were from 2011 to 2020. I think he's kind of carried the torch from 2020 in a lot of ways and introduced Bitcoin to massive pools of capital. I am surprised that more companies haven't followed his lead, giving up the break in inflation we have had exactly as Michael Saylor predicted, the melting ice cube, as he called it at that time, is exactly what happened. Well, I guess we can say now we're in a new era where BlackRock and those other major institutions are now looking at Bitcoin. So his work on the institutional level, I guess, is now bearing fruit. Three years later, I see in the Middle East, they are starting to recognize Bitcoin. So that's a huge pool of capital. I think all of that oil money will find its way into Bitcoin and be a huge catalyst for the prices. It is a natural way for the oil industry to diversify their portfolio because Bitcoin is essentially energy and the energy eventually gets priced in Bitcoin. And there is a marriage between these two in a big way. So I think that's kind of the answer. I have always been fascinated by price discovery in markets and the architecture of how markets work under the hood. And Bitcoin is such a pristine, perfect money. And I think it is something that humans have been searching for since forever. And now we're seeing it change society on a really fundamental level with the introduction of Bitcoin. And a lot of people are freaking out because of it, because it destroys the status quo. And a lot of people who have been waiting for it to come along have had the faith that humanity can be saved. They see Bitcoin in those terms. So you have this split going on, which is very exciting. So it just continues on and on. And you cannot, how could you not be interested in it? I think the people who were into it earlier and just walked away just never got it from the beginning. Once it's characterized as an asset class, we have nothing to do except position ourselves in this asset class. Either we are going to be a small position or a big position, but we cannot ignore it. We cannot not have a position. Now check this out. So even 1 % of that multi -hundred trillion dollar funds available moves the needle on Bitcoin and it moves it up considerably. He's referencing the 700 trillion dollar plus total addressable market. And he continues, so if we get into the 5 to 10 % range, then you start to really see it raise ahead to the seven figure type predictions that people have been making, including myself, because Bitcoin is an asset class preach. And on the flip side, we have what we saw in the gold market, which is the ability to control the price discovery and manipulate the prices. It's real through the derivatives markets. So the price of gold has been lagging inflation for 20 years because the governments around the world don't like gold making their fiat money look bad. That's right. So they make it easy for the huge funds to manipulate the price of gold and to scalp it, to continuously skim profits off of gold, which is what they do almost every single day. You can watch it and see it. That's pretty clear. And they are very good at keeping the price of gold and silver down. There's something like for every ounce of silver, there's probably 50 ounces worth of derivatives floating in various exchanges around world that are used to keep the price of silver down because governments don't want gold to race ahead and draw capital out of their fiat money scam into gold. He's preaching. Now with Bitcoin, we have the ability to pull our private keys, which is not really available with gold. Technically people can take delivery of gold on these exchanges, but there has never been an organized attempt to do so. We tried to do it a few years ago with crash JP Morgan, buy gold and silver because after the 2008 financial crisis, when JP Morgan ended up buying Bear Stearns effectively for nothing, they inherited this huge multimillion short silver position that Bear Stearns was managing at the behest of presumably the government. The government likes to stay involved. And so I did some calculations and it became clear that if this short position was not covered, the price of silver could go to 60 to $70 an ounce, and it would bankrupt JP Morgan Chase. Take that Jamie Dimon. So we started this crash JP Morgan buy silver campaign, and we got the price of silver from $15 up to $50. So we got it up to $50 level. And then the Fed of course came in, they changed the laws overnight to make it possible for these banks to have and carry a much greater short position and silver. So they printed up a lot of paper, silver derivatives, and they stopped the run on their bank. And the price of silver went back down to $15 or so. So we've seen that it is possible to force capitulation in that silver market. But at the end of the day, because the ability to pull private keys is not like it is Bitcoin, I don't think it'll ever succeed. Whereas with Bitcoin, you can pull your private keys. Now, I mean, he is speaking facts right here. Warren Buffett and his own words has said, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction. The central bankers are using it to manipulate the markets. That's what they're doing with silver. That's what they're doing with gold and precious metals. And Max makes a great point. They don't want the gold and silver prices to rise up. It undermines the US dollar. They're trying to keep a strong dollar, right? So that's why gold has been pretty stable at like $2 ,000 and unable to really climb much above it. I think it's been pretty stagnant virtually for the past decade. So with the dollar inflating from them continuing to print trillions of dollars, the fact that gold isn't just continuously going up, it proves that the market is manipulated. You also got to consider as well, there is no scarce asset like Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a finite limited supply of 21 million coins. Yeah, gold may be rare or scarce, but they dump a new supply every year into the market. They can control it. They could invest more into discovering more gold. As Jack Mallers pointed out, Elon could maybe discover more gold on Mars. Who knows? Bitcoin, you can't say the same thing. Bitcoin is perfect money. It's incorruptible. It's unconfiscatable and the list goes on and on. So if you had the choice to put your wealth somewhere, what asset class would you choose to put it in? Let me know, fam. 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.
Bitcoin & Crypto Trading: Ledger Cast
A highlight from Is crypto dead?
"Hello, welcome to Leisure Cast. My name is Brian Farsgaard here with the one, the only Josh Olsowich. Hey, Josh, Brian, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Good. It's hoodie season back in my natural form. This is my favorite time of year. The crowd wants to know, not because it's tax filing season, but because it is not miserably hot anymore. That's true. It was 90 upper 90s here last week. It was nuts. Oh, that's hot. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it because the humidity calms down. Yeah. Temperature calms down. People get back from their summer breaks and maybe they start trading. I don't really care about that part. Oh, you're in the deep south because you got that gross, gross heat plus humidity. Yeah. So I need this break. I need this break. I love this season. Football is back. I know you care about that a lot. Huge fly Eagles fly. That's what they tell me to say. They say They here. played quite well last night. I did. I watched a bit of it. They did play well. Yeah, football season, playoff baseball. I mean, fall is really the greatest time. The changing of the leaves eventually. We won't get that for a little while, but we have much to be thankful for. Thanksgiving. Speaking of thankful, that's not too late. We have much to be thankful for, Josh. Bitcoin does well on Thanksgiving, historically. Well, could have fooled me this month. Look, we might be grasping at straws here, but there's not much else to talk about. Not much is going on right now. Everybody's just kind of waiting for a bunch of things. Yeah. And we're just in limbo here. You know, the old trusty 200 week is one with the price. Ethan BTC. We're just basically the average of... We're below it, though. What if this is the historic high ever for the 200 week? What if it only curls down below it forever more? That would be pretty bad. It's certainly a sign of being sideways at best when you're hovering around all the moving averages of whatever sorts you want to analyze. There's really not a lot to say on Bitcoin. I think the market is so thin in both directions that we are one headline away from a 10 % day one way or the other. Something bad goes down with an exchange that rhymes with... Finance. Let me see if I can find a word, Josh. And, you know, that's the negative 10 % day potentially. But if we get that BlackRock ETF, maybe... We're gonna be saying that for like six months. It'll just be around the corner, guys. Just wait another few weeks. BlackRock's gonna come save us, guys. Not a place we want to be, you know? The same thing with halving. You don't want to be the central focus, even though that's how it's been historically. This is no different than 2020, 2016. It's no different. It's just, you know, same stuff, different day. It's got to be boring, even in the good times. Even when there is another cycle, historically there has been. There's still loads of time that's just boring where people get sucked out of the ecosystem, lack of paying attention, etc. Hey, Josh, I want to give a shout out. Thanks, RedScrutinizer, for bringing it up early in the show. We usually mention it towards the end that Josh does videos. But Josh does videos, and you should check them out at Carpe Noctem on YouTube. Carpe Noctem. I don't know how to spell it, so I'm saying it. Yeah, that'll help. People have no clue. It's N -O -C -T -O -M? There you go. You know what I randomly looked today at our... This has turned into a podcast of a podcast, but I looked at our reviews on some podcast stream, and it was over four and a half stars. I was like, oh shit, we got... People like us? I guess so. I don't know. I will say there has been a steady crew who have watched and listened to this show for like six years. It has been six years, Josh. They've tolerated us for quite some time. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. We started in 17, so six years. Six years you've known me. I've owed you a stake for about three. It's true. That's very true. Yeah. Thanks for being here, y 'all. Appreciate you. Even when it's really boring, how can you possibly make money when it's not boring if you can't be here when it's boring? Well, look, there's two things you can do. You can learn about the tech, which might sound cliche, but I did a lot of my Bitcoin learning in 2015, 2014. You know, there's not all those damage else to do, then like to learn what the hell's going on with this stuff, right? Drink the Kool -Aid, get indoctrinated, whatever. That was the time. Look at some of these long timers in the chat, Karen, Callie. We actually met in person one time even. She's been here for most of the time since we've been recording. I like this one. I like you, but I also hate you since 2019. Thank you, Liam. We will take it. You know, the thing is we have very little agenda other than our own bags, but we're just talking about our thoughts about them here. We're not trying to convince you to buy them or sell them or anything else. We're just discussing it and y 'all are here because you decided to listen to conversation. So there's very, very, very little opportunity to be victim to our terrible words. Well, hip hop is right. The best content does come during the bear market, I think. Yeah. So anyway, back to price. Yes, I've been DCA for months. I could care less with prices. The lower it goes, the happier I get because that means I get more BTC. If it goes below 15, sure. I don't care. I'm not worried about, we've talked about this for weeks, but if we're below 15 and it's 2025, then we're in trouble. But if we're boring and oscillating between 23 and 30 for the next six months, I'm not worried about it personally. 23 and 30 would be great. This drive chain nonsense is exciting me because governance debates historically have been bullish. If nobody cares about what you do with the chain, then it's not a good chain. Sure. Yeah, I agree. The ultimate crazy shower thought is where does BlackRock, how do they vote on the fork? Are people actually talking about a fork? No, but let's say it comes to that. I'm not talking about the most likely scenario here. I'm talking about a potential scenario. I'd assume they'd vote with the miners. I'd assume they'd vote for it. I don't know. There was something in the prospectus about forks for the BlackRock ETF. I can't remember exactly what it said, but yeah, I don't know. That'd be interesting. If that comes to pass, I don't think it will, but something to think about way down the line. Yeah. Zero X, lots of vowels says ESG fork. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Fink has really backed off the CEO of BlackRock. He's really backed off of the ESG narrative. And if anything, we're getting a lot of press on the side of Bitcoin being ESG friendly. So it's really... Grid stabilization. Yeah. It's really changed after that. I think the New York Times piece was the bottom of the dirty Bitcoin narrative potentially. I think grid stabilization has to exist though. They have to figure out how does this not just waste energy, but how does it create stability? How does it use renewables? You have to push into those things really hard because otherwise I personally feel like proof of work feels kind of pointless if it's not just work, but it's also waste. Proof of work that's not waste, I think is fine. Well, you're securing the assets. What are the values for all of the banks globally? I know, but proof of stake is also doing a pretty good job of securing the assets. Proof of stake has yet to prove itself. It hasn't been a successful proof of stake chain since existed. it's We haven't seen Ethereum proof of stake in a bull market and it hasn't done so hot so far. So it needs time to prove itself. That's all I'm saying. Look at any proof of stake coin historically, and they don't do well for whatever reason, they do not do well. I'm not saying it's not secure. I'm just saying, look, it hasn't done well. Yeah, undeniable. I'm not sure about that. Let's pull up CoinGecko. You tell me which. EOS? Has that done well? Oh, come on. I'm talking about will Ethereum do well with proof of stake? Yeah. Okay. But I'm saying we can't just assume ETH is going to do well because it's ETH. It's changed its security model. It's changed the yield component. It hasn't proven itself yet in my eyes. That's all I'm saying. Neither has Solana, neither has Tron, Cardano, Dot, Matic. All this stuff hasn't really done anything or gone anywhere. Five years ago, we had a list of other 10 proof of stake coins that didn't do anything. I maintain this philosophy of Bitcoin versus Ethereum, wherein the variability of Ethereum is okay. It does change. It does have governance adjustments, but it's still pretty Chad -like. BTC, you know what you get. It can be good, but you just know what you get. That doesn't make Ethereum bad. Alts should have higher beta to Bitcoin. They're just riskier. And that's where all the stupid stuff happens. So yeah, there's the Lido issues with these. But there's issues with every proof of stake coin. Historically, they just don't do well over time. That's all I'm saying. There's issues with miner centralization as well. Of course. But miner centralization issues are very similar to the staking centralization issues. Similar, but I wouldn't say the same. All I'm saying is if you're drinking the ETH Kool -Aid, I don't care which side of the debate you're on. I'm just saying find one proof of stake coin that does well over time. I haven't seen it. I have not seen it. Ripple doesn't count. Doge doesn't count. Litecoin doesn't count. You will, don't worry. I hope ETH is the first one. But we just haven't seen it. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. ETH BTC appears to just want to keep going droopy sideways down. I don't know if we call this a direction or not. I mean, that is a downtrend over the last year, one year of downtrend. But it's not like puke -y. You want to hear a crazy thought? Bitcoin's having will be more bullish for ETH than it will be for Bitcoin. Sure. I don't think that's that crazy. It's down 23 % in a year, ETH BTC. Relative to previous bear markets, that's not much at all. 80%. Suzanne's got time. Or I'm saying we've created some stabilization in these asset ratios. I don't know. Well, it doesn't look bullish, but it doesn't look turbo bearish. You know, it looks neutral. It looks like it's ready for lows. It doesn't look like it wants to go higher, that's for sure. But would you expect it to? It's not the coin that's getting an ETF. It's not the coin that has all the flows. ETH? Yeah. Oh, dude, the first thing you do once the Bitcoin ETF is announced is assume the ETH ETF is on the way. Right. We've talked about this, that the best news for ETH is, of course, a Bitcoin ETF. Who cares about Bitcoin, right? That's fine. I'm not going to disagree with you. But I'm saying in the moment, the flows are just not going to come to ETH first. ETH will have its day. There's no doubt ETH will be at 10K. Clip it, chat, clip it and ship it. Talk to me in 2025. ETH BTC may do super well. It may go to 0 .1. But over time, it has not done well. I do like T -Bells flip mode. ETH. I think most of the civilized universe likes T -Bells. ETH to 10K is where you lost me. Not because... Is that too low? No, no, no. Not because I was unhappy. I was euphoric. Okay. That's all I need. Just little ETH to 10K action, Josh, and sunset. We ride off into it. That's all we need. You know what else I was thinking? What's that? It's the constant thought of these institutional products. Are they going to offer a yield component? Eventually, they should. I just don't know if that's baked in to the initial applications, right? Yeah. Shouldn't probably be baked into the initial applications. Why not? What if you have BlackRock, you know, take over Lido? What a crazy thought that is, you know? It is a crazy thought. Then we really get to see how good Proof of Stake is. Yeah, I just got excited. I think we need to think like that because of the institutional influence that's clearly going to be here eventually, right? What's going to happen when OFAC compliant BlackRock takes over ETH, you know? Same thing with Bitcoin. They're buying miners. They've got influence on all sorts of stuff. Just something to think about long term. Yeah. I don't think we've really seen the wars that will exist, like have looked puny compared to the wars of the future. No, I don't think we'll have BTC staking. But I don't know. Things could get wild, right? Absolutely wild when the most important asset manager on the universe is in our backyard all of a sudden, you know? Yeah. I want to talk about the dollar. But first, there was a ruling this week where there were two dissenting opinions in crypto's favor. But I don't remember what the ruling was on. Do you remember? I thought one was for Uniswap, but that was two weeks ago. No, it was about the Stoner Cats thing. NFT stuff. As an NFT person, what are your thoughts on that? I think a lot of NFTs played like dance real close to the fire. But at the same time, I think it's really interesting and encouraging to see SEC commissioners write these dissenting opinions and making pretty direct correlations to things like Star Wars collectibles of the past. Like, for someone to purchase a Star Wars collectible and think that, okay, this might be valuable in the future is not an unreasonable thought. That does not make it a security, you know? That said, I don't know that I would say like Stoner Cats or many other NFT projects were like in perfect compliance with what they were doing, too. Like, they might have been going a little hard on the, hey, a number might go up thing versus like... They were a product of their time. Versus enjoy the cats, you know? You buy it for the quality of the art.
Dennis Prager Podcasts
DeSantis Contradicts CDC, Spreads Vaccine Skepticism
"DeSantis spreads vaccine skepticism with guidance that contradicts CDC. Skepticism with guidance. Yes. Well, I want to say on behalf of the New York Times, the headline is fair. That's exactly what he's doing. He is spreading skepticism with the guidance that contradicts the CDC. The CDC on Tuesday recommended at least one dose of the updated COVID -19 vaccines for most Americans six months. Six months? Yes. What is your feeling, I'm directing this obviously to all of you, but specifically to my producer, do you think the CDC is recommending that six -month -olds get the so -called COVID vaccine, because MRNAs are not strictly speaking vaccines by the definition of the term, but I'm not going to go there because it's not relevant. Do you think that it is because they believe it will help six -month -olds or because they are panic -stricken, which is part of answer number one actually, choice number one, or because of the power of Big Pharma?
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Sen. Mitt Romney Believes He Represents The Wise Wing Of The GOP
"This is your source for breaking news and what to make of it all. This is the Mike Gallagher Show. If you have to go to trial, will you testify in your own defense? Oh yes, absolutely. That I look forward to. It would be a disaster for Donald Trump to take the stand. We are going to bring a reckoning to the CDC. All these agencies that were responsible for lying to the American people. There are plans to indict the president's son by September 29th. Could be any time before that. Now, from the ReliefFactor .com studios, here's Mike Gallagher. I was really glad to see Ron DeSantis condemn what he called the excessive prison sentences against some of these January 6th defendants. Pretty impressive and bold proclamation. Of course, the mainstream media is going after him. Here's cut 16. Here's Governor DeSantis yesterday with Eric Bolling on Newsmax last night. January 6th, some of the people that are that are going away now, they've 15, 18 and 22 years for Terrio as a president. Would President Ron DeSantis commute or pardon those guys? We will look at all those cases, I mean, so there are some examples of people that should not have been prosecuted. They just walked into the Capitol. If they were BLM, they would not have been prosecuted. Then there's other examples of people that probably did commit misconduct. They may have been violent. But to say it's an act of terrorism, when it was basically a protest that devolved into a riot to do excessive sentences, you can look at, OK, maybe they were guilty. But 22 years, if other people that did other things got six months. So I think we need a single standard of justice. And so we'll use pardons and commutations as appropriate to ensure that everyone's treated equally. And as we know, a lot of people with the BLM riots, they didn't get prosecuted at all. You know, every time I hear this guy, he checks every box for me and there's no way around it. He is a formidable.
Dear Chiefs Podcast
"six month long" Discussed on Dear Chiefs Podcast
"Engine five dispatch, pockets of fire all around. Dear Chief, much has happened since we last spoke. Welcome to Dear Chief podcast, where your hosts and their guests share the four one one of being married to the people who respond to nine one ones. Take a peek into fire family life and get unabashed advice on how to prevent forest fires in your marriage. Now here's your host, two seasoned firewives, Audra and Chelsea. Today we are talking to a newer firewife, Krista Harkin. Krista is a mother of two, a proud firewife and a powerhouse in Chicago's real estate scene. She leads one of the city's top real estate teams. Krista's journey into the firefighting lifestyle is a relatively recent one, but it didn't take long for her to grasp the profound reality of what it means to be married to a firefighter. Shortly after her husband graduated from the Chicago Fire Academy, his engine company faced the heart wrenching loss of one of their own in the line of duty. It was a life altering experience that left a lasting impact on their family. But the challenges didn't stop there. Just months later, Krista's family encountered an unexpected medical emergency that forced her husband into a six month long medical leave. These unforeseen events brought about significant changes in both her work and family life. However, they also offered her a unique perspective. Krista now deeply understands the importance of letting go of what cannot be controlled, especially when confronted with the unexpected obstacles that inevitably come with the firefighting life. Krista's journey took an intriguing turn when her husband introduced her to our podcast. Listening to the show, she found comfort in hearing the stories of other women who shared her experiences, assuring her that there is a strong community of support for firefighting families spanning across the nation. Furthermore, Krista gained a newfound appreciation for the vast differences between wildland firefighting and city firefighting. With this fresh perspective and a desire to connect with others who share her journey, Krista is here to share her own story. We believe her experiences and insight resonate deeply with many of our listeners, providing a unique and valuable connection in the world of firefighting and the challenges it brings to families like hers. So without further ado, let's delve into Krista's inspiring journey and the invaluable lessons she's learned along the way. Welcome, Krista. Thank you so much. Thanks for the introduction and for having me. So tell us a little bit more about your family background, how long your firefighter has been with the department. So relatively newer as a fire wife and fire mom. My husband graduated from the academy in 2021. So just about almost going on the fourth year now. And we have two kids ages four and two. So your hubby started in 21 in the middle of pandemic. Yes. Yeah. It was super fun. So it was tough, honestly. I mean, obviously none of us knew how long it was going to last. Chicago was pretty strict with the lockdowns right away. And, you know, in real estate, it was a very busy time, which was great career wise. And also we were adapting to the shifts of everything. So, you know, that was very busy. I was also pregnant and had a two year old. And at that time, let's see, I guess he was in the academy right when COVID hit, so 2020. And then he graduated 2021. So he was gone pretty much every day, going to the academy for 2020 while I was home working with, you know, being pregnant and having our other child. And I was pretty isolated, honestly. We did everything with work via Zoom. And especially with my team, we're very, very connected, almost like a second family. So that was a big emotional switch for me. I'm just a person that needs to be around people. I need to have that connection and a vibe off of other people's energy. So it was tough. It was tough Okay. Tell us what it's like in a big city department, like Chicago Fire. We were just talking about this off the air. Chicago still has the, you know, you have to live within so many miles to actually be in the department, which we don't have that out here. There's no way. It's not possible. So give us like a little breakdown of how Chicago Fire operates. Sure. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's pretty strict rules. Like when he first got into the academy, there was actually somebody that came out to our house and made sure that we lived in the city grounds, came into our house, looked at everything in our house. It was pretty crazy. I had no idea that that was going to happen. I didn't know what to expect there. And then from there on, it was just pretty much known. And I mean, my husband did give me a heads up on that, but you know, we also never knew when exactly he would get called. I think he signed up for the list maybe like seven years ago or something. And so, you know, part of us were like, well, he might not ever get called because you can't get called past 40 years old. But then he did, he got called right in the start of COVID. And, you know, we just knew from there that he was going to accept it and go through it and graduate and be a firefighter in Chicago. And we were going to have to stay in the city for forever, pretty much. So that was definitely another mind shift for me and something I had to adapt to because I'm from Wisconsin. And I think somewhere in the back of my head, I was like, I think maybe we'll move back to Wisconsin and, you know, be closer and be out of the city life. But, yeah, it's not going to happen. So when they came to your house, I guess, making sure that he's not lying about his address or something. That's weird. That's crazy. I've actually never heard that. But Yeah, I mean, I had no idea that that was going to happen either. But yeah, yeah, it's pretty direct though. Tell me about how he signed up seven years ago and he just got called. What was he doing before and what brought him into the field? Yeah, so he was actually an electrician, so a union worker electrician in the city, which also had similar guidelines where you had to be in the city. And when he started that apprenticeship, he signed up for the firefighting test, then he got called in to take the written test. And then, you know, it's just whenever thoughts are needed, then they go down the list, and it's all random. So he just he just got called. And then he took another test and a physical test. And then from there, you go through the Academy, which I think was around nine months or so. And then after that, he got just randomly placed in an engine house. Oh, interesting. And during Academy, were you kind of given any expectations from the department, like what was going to happen during probation, anything like that? Not really. The thing about Chicago, which is interesting, and I'm learning this as as being a part of the family. And I think, Joe, my husband was expecting this a little bit more just because he's lived in Chicago his whole life. But it takes a long time for the city to get back to you about anything, to be completely honest. So we didn't have a ton of information. It was kind of like, whenever you get called, you need to be ready. You need to go in for the next step, or whatever it was. So no, we did not have a lot of heads up on anything. That's... Yeah. So how does it work done in California? It kind of sounds like Cal Fire to me. I don't know. Here, so you made a list. Oh, by the way, you're hired. Oh, by the way, tomorrow you're going to Academy. Oh, and also, let's not tell anybody about anything because it's a secret society. Yeah. That sounds similar. So it's pretty much the same. I don't know why it's like that either. It's like, can't we get a heads up on anything so we know it's exact, but no. Wouldn't that be helpful? It would, but it seems to be the same as a firewife, right? Yes. You never know what to expect. You can't really set any expectations, and at the same time, it's so important to set them. Well, and then on top of that, the department does have expectations of you as his spouse, but those expectations are not shared. And so everybody is in this free for all, and everybody has expectations of everybody, but nobody knows what they are. How does that compute? Like the math isn't mapping, you know? Oh, I know. I know. You just have to take it week by week, you know? And then every new experience that you go through, it's like, okay, now I know what to expect with that experience. And also don't forget, it could change next time, even if it's the same exact situation. Right? Exactly. So you get no nothing from anybody about what to expect during Academy, what to expect during probation, and then your husband starts with probation, and there is a casualty, an LODD. Yes. So yeah, it was pretty wild and obviously extremely sad. But I would say, so he graduated, yes, from 2021. And then it was that December, they had a fire, I think it was at like two o'clock in the morning. And you know, in Chicago, it's like a lot of structural fires buildings. So I believe it was a three flat or some sort of apartment building. And you know, when they approached it, they didn't expect that, you know, it would be a big tragedy result. And, you know, honestly, we still don't really know exactly what happened. But they went in, there was a fire, I think they detected that the fire was downstairs and in the basement started on a couch or something like that. And a young man that died in the fire, he went down to the basement. And then long story short, they couldn't find him. So you know, of course, everyone is going back in and looking for him, looking for him. I know one of the ones that went back in as well. And, you know, it's crazy to think about, because I wasn't there. All I see is what I'm imagining in my head. I can't even imagine what it was like for him. And then this other person who passed away because it was pretty much their first fire. These two, like my husband was straight out of the Academy, Sean was straight out of the Academy as well. And so you know, they're going in and they did save some people, they pulled some people out. And unfortunately, he just didn't make it. And I will never forget that phone call that I got from my husband at three o'clock in the morning, sobbing, crying, and my husband is not a crier. I mean, he's just not. So I knew something really bad had happened and traumatic had happened. And, you know, I'm just sitting there on the phone trying to put all the pieces together and figure out, well, okay, this is happening, and it's real. And then what can I do? You know, I can't go there. He can't come home. It was just all very surreal situation. I honestly I didn't really know how to handle it. So I think we just hung up the phone and I was like, I go back to bed. I mean, you know, it was just a very weird situation. And for that to happen so soon, I then realized really quickly the seriousness of this career. And then, of course, being pregnant and having another kid, I was like, I'm gonna have to set expectations for them too. And then you start thinking really far in advance. And all these what ifs, you know, it's a lot. So I don't think I knew that that lifestyle was going to be such a huge drastic shift and continue to shift as our family grows. And at the same time, I am really grateful for it, because I think it has built a lot of resiliency in me and my family and my husband. So you know, that's always good. So they didn't take his engine company out of service after a line of duty death? They didn't. It was a really small engine too. It was only, I think maybe just five guys. No, they didn't. I mean, after that, it was all about planning a funeral, doing the memorial service, everything. Do you know if they brought in a critical incident team or anything like that? So I haven't heard anything about a critical incident team. However, the most that they did, I think, was offer them some sort of therapy. To me anyway, it seemed like it was like, you can call this number or these people are available for you if you need it. And of course, like my husband, he's not going to be proactive and like make the initiative to call and do that. So not really. I don't think any of those guys thought any help after that. No. So were they in the academy together? They were either in it together or they were, they just missed each other, but they both joined that engine at the same time. So they knew new guys in a brand new house. One of them passes away and they don't bring in any counseling. They don't down the engine and they just expect the crew to keep working like nothing happened. I mean, yeah, pretty much. And at the same time, it was pretty amazing what the individuals of that engine house did to remember him and to support the family. We did like a charity fundraiser for their family one night ended up being a really happy thing, you know, great way to support the family. I got to meet his father and his siblings and this, this guy was an all star guy, you know, a huge guy. Joe told me he was a big football player, just like a great guy, you know, so there was a lot of support, which that was definitely a positive thing, but that was all done by the individual guys in the, in the house. They did a Memorial statue for him. Everybody pitched in to get that done and it's at the front of the house now. So he's definitely there, but in terms of like the overall department, I would say once it was off the news, no, there wasn't a lot of talk about it or a lot of support other than just trying to figure out what happened. So how was your husband when he came off shift? Oh, he was quiet, really quiet. Didn't really want to talk about it. I don't think he even realized exactly what happened. He, he was in shock too, because I do remember him continuing to say, I just don't get it. I just don't get it. I don't understand how it happened. I don't. And then you would say things like we were putting on our gear together and we were like laughing before we went out. Like, I don't get it. You know, I think he was just in total shock. And also maybe kind of like me where we just didn't think that something so tragic would happen, maybe even at all. Because, because also, and I don't know how it is in California, but so many young guys in Chicago and women, but mostly guys, I would say if you grow up in Chicago in the city, like being a Chicago firefighter is like bad-ass, you know? So it's always looked at as like being this cool thing and whatever, but it's an intense job. I mean, you're saving people's lives and you're risking yours too and risking others, obviously, but you don't think about it. I don't think unless you're really hit with it. So yeah, he was definitely in shock. Yeah. So there's something about, I don't know if it's a big city and this is just my observation. I feel like in those big cities, a lot of stuff is looked over because, you know, you're with this big city and you're this bad-ass. So all of what they think is frivolous stuff, they just sweep it under the rug and there's nothing really addressed like with the crews and with their families and stuff. Maybe that's just in general. I don't know. Maybe it's not just the big cities now that I talk about it now that I think about it out loud. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes big cities focus on things that don't actually matter. And so those issues take prevalence over real issues, just in my opinion, from what I've seen. But yeah, I mean, and it happens everywhere for sure. And how is your husband now? He's good. He is good. He loves what he does. He has so much pride in what he does, and he's always had that in him. So I did know that this is always the right career for him. I think it truly is his calling. And then I think after what had happened, it gave him even more reason to want to have that sense of pride and be a really strong first responder, a strong firefighter. And now ever since then, he does every like certification, every test, everything that he can get in order to continue to elevate within the department he's going for. Is he in rescue now? He's never even swam before really in his life. I mean, other than just like jumping in the pool, you know, in summer or something, but he's good. I'm really proud of him. He's pushing himself and he really wants to be doing the right things in the in the department. So yeah, he's good. And then right after that, you guys also had some other stuff happen to where he had to take a pretty long medical leave. Do you want to talk about that? Sure. That was another unexpected situation. So he played hockey on a Thursday night. This is probably a month after, you know, the whole loss of Sean. And we were sitting in the dining room table, maybe the Saturday after a Thursday, he played hockey. And he was like, Krista, do my eyes look like weird or something? And I looked closely and I was like, one of your pupils is larger than the other. He was like, really? He was texting a couple of paramedic buddies, you know, in the department. And one of the guys wrote back and just said, dude, you need to go to the hospital right now. You need to go to the emergency room. So of course, my husband didn't want to go. He's like, I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's okay. And I was like, Joe, let's just go. There's no reason not to your mom can come over and watch the kids or whatever. And so we went to the emergency room and they took him in for an MRI. And he had a TIA, which is kind of like a mini stroke. It's like a artery dissection. So thankfully, he didn't have a full stroke. But if we hadn't gone to the ER that night, it was it was pretty likely that he would have had a stroke. So again, just, you know, unexpected situations and also super grateful that he's still here and it's keeping him stronger. Every experience that he goes through. So that took him on medical leave for six months. So then he was back at home all the time. And we're still in COVID. So a couple months after the LODD, he had a TIA. Yeah. So then that restricted him from basically doing a lot of activities that he loves. He couldn't golf, couldn't play hockey. The doctors in the beginning or the neurologist even said, you know, don't lift your babies or your kids. He just had to be really, really careful. And he was on blood thinners. So that automatically took him out, you know, on medical leave too. And I will say after that point, I mean, I'm sure it was a combination of the two that, you know, the two things that happened, but he definitely went in a place I hadn't seen him go. It was hard. He felt like he was not doing anything. I think he lost his sense of purpose a little bit. So that was a long road that year. And then when he finally got back into the firehouse and he finally got patient back, he was then going through another transition and we ended up moving as well and had, you know, our second baby. So it was a lot, but I would say now he's, he's doing really, really well. And like, I feel like we're finally kind of getting into a rhythm. What are their shifts like? Are they 48 96 or no, they're not. And I heard a lot of, a lot of people on your show talking about the longer shifts and then longer breaks, it sounds like, but here for the most part, it's 24 on 48 off. So it's quicker. And then of course it sounds similar to California as well, where you're on a list for overtime. And if he gets called like at six o'clock in the morning, you kind of have to say yes or no. And he's always like, I'm going to say yes. So we just have to be prepared for that. So yeah, that's it. He has one day to recover and, you know, so I try to be respectful and understand that he's, he's tired, especially if he had shifts all throughout the night and then it's then only one day to kind of catch up on everything. So it does feel kind of quick too, to, to get back into any kind of rhythm. Yeah. And it's nice to just have them home. So pros and cons, I think. So you're working full time, husband's working full time. You guys have two kids. Yup. How's the adjusting going at home? It's good. You know, I think once I finally accepted, and I would say I'll be truthful, I'm still not quite there, but like accepted the fact that I have to be really flexible, the more flexible one. You guys have always talked about the default parents and all that. And I never really thought about that until I started listening. And I think for a long time, I felt like this is so unfair. Why? Just because my work is flexible and yours is an absolute, why does this all have to fall on me? I feel like I'm moving backwards in my job. And then I feel like I'm frustrated with that and kind of disappointed in myself. And then I feel like, you know, as a, as a mom, then because that energy is kind of there, then I'm not being the best mom I can be either. It can be hard still, but I think I just need to get to a place of fully accepting this is what it is and fully supporting him and our lifestyle and getting a better grasp about it. We are getting better about it every week. So it's just figuring out the balance and also being positive and making sure that we're on top of our schedules as much as possible too, so that we're splitting all of our time where need be and also keeping our marriage strong, which of course, you know, everybody knows is effort in itself. So yeah, it's a lot. I mean, don't get it twisted. Like we're over here 15 years in still just like all the same things that you're having. No, I think, I think I've finally resigned myself to the fact that I'm just not going to work because it's impossible. I literally made that decision this year. I'm like, well, for what reason? Like for me. I know. I know. I mean, I shouldn't say this because my bosses are probably going to listen to this because they're the best and they support me. They're like brothers to me and my whole team is awesome, which is pretty much the only reason saying, but yeah, I thought the same thing. Like some days I'm like, why am I even working? Like, I don't even feel like I can give anything there because I just can't. The priority lies where my family is and they need me, especially. I mean, it's never going to change when your kids get older as you know, and I'm not there yet, but especially when they're little, they need me like physically and emotionally quite a bit. So, you know, I just have to put myself there and then work the best that I can and do the best that I can because it does matter to me too. It's really hard for us. I think as moms, because we feel like, like you said, I mean, we've talked about this a million times about being the default parent. It's one of those things where it's like, I don't know where in society. Well, I do a long time ago, they decided that the man works and the wife stays home and all of the responsibilities for the home life and the kids fall on the mom. And it's one of those things where it's kind of like, how do you get out of that? Especially when you are married to a firefighter or first responder where it's like, they can't work part-time. They can't decide what days they're working. You don't have the option to, you know, work your schedules and try to coordinate things all the time because of overtime and things like that. And it's very hard, especially when the kids are little. I mean, I stayed home for eight and a half years until my youngest was in kindergarten because I was like you where I was just like, I don't know how to do this. I can't be five places at once. It's not humanly possible. Right. And so I think it just leads women to believe that it's our job to take over all of the family dynamics. And it's just, it's really, really hard. Yeah. It can get exhausting. And especially if you're like me and you're, you're not good at certain things like cooking or I don't enjoy that. You know what I mean? So I'm like, okay, let's put a frozen pizza in the oven. That's clearly what we're having for dinner tonight because you know, the kids got fed. Who cares? Right. I know. I know. I know it's one of those things. And some days you're like, God, I suck. You know, like I'm giving them pizza or Mac and cheese or whatever. But yeah, I think we had about like five staples when the kids were younger, especially on chip night. It was like nuggies, Mac and cheese, pizza, tacos, grilled cheese, grilled cheese, quesadillas. Wait, those were the staples when the kids were younger. Cause I'm pretty sure those are still the staples now. And my kids are teenagers. Well, those were what I was making. Now they want upside as they're older can make it themselves. My oldest daughter is like, we're like, what do you want for dinner tonight? She looks at us. She's like Jake, like, really? Okay. Oh my gosh. That's a firefighter's kid right there. Like a tri tip and mashed potatoes, please. And a Caesar salad. And you're like, yeah, no, that's when dad's home. Sorry. I'm not doing that. Exactly. Exactly. But I think that the bottom line is no matter what you are a good mom, you are doing your best and you have to keep reminding yourself all of those things, as long as they're being fed, they're going to live. As long as you know, they're taking a bath every other day or whatever, they're going to survive all of the expectations that everybody in society has told us for so long. It's like, no, that's not going to work. I have to also survive. So we're going to do what works best for our family and we're going to be okay with that. And I'm not going to feel guilty about it. Right. Cause right. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, thanks for saying that. It's always a good reminder. And I think all moms really do feel that, you know, so it's just something that moms feel. All right. Any last thoughts you want to share before we put you on the hot seat? Oh yeah. I was nervous about that part. No, I would just say, you know, anybody in Chicago, feel free to reach out because it took me a while to find some people that I could actually relate to, especially when you move around and you're newer into the lifestyle. So I'm always open with connections and I'm really grateful for the connections that I've made so far. And I'm looking forward to making more and supporting each other. So yeah. Thank you guys for everything you do. I'm glad my husband introduced me to the show. Wait, how did he find us? Probably scrolling on Instagram while he was on shift, sitting down, looking at videos. And then he sent it to me and then I sent it to a couple of friends and I was like, Oh, this one, this episode is good. You should listen to this one. And yeah, so it was nice. It was helpful. So we're just going to ask you a series of rapid fire questions and you're just going to tell us the first thing that comes to mind. Oh God. Okay.
Dear Chiefs Podcast
"six month long" Discussed on Dear Chiefs Podcast
"We are talking to a newer firewife, Krista Harkin. Krista is a mother of two, a proud firewife and a powerhouse in Chicago's real estate scene. She leads one of the city's top real estate teams. Krista's journey into the firefighting lifestyle is a relatively recent one, but it didn't take long for her to grasp the profound reality of what it means to be married to a firefighter. Shortly after her husband graduated from the Chicago Fire Academy, his engine company faced the heart wrenching loss of one of their own in the line of duty. It was a life altering experience that left a lasting impact on their family. But the challenges didn't stop there. Just months later, Krista's family encountered an unexpected medical emergency that forced her husband into a six month long medical leave. These unforeseen events brought about significant changes in both her work and family life. However, they also offered her a unique perspective. Krista now deeply understands the importance of letting go of what cannot be controlled, especially when confronted with the unexpected obstacles that inevitably come with the firefighting life. Krista's journey took an intriguing turn when her husband introduced her to our podcast. Listening to the show, she found comfort in hearing the stories of other women who shared her experiences, assuring her that there is a strong community of support for firefighting families spanning across the nation. Furthermore, Krista gained a newfound appreciation for the vast differences between wildland firefighting and city firefighting. With this fresh perspective and a desire to connect with others who share her journey, Krista is here to share her own story. We believe her experiences and insight resonate deeply with many of our listeners, providing a unique and valuable connection in the world of firefighting and the challenges it brings to families like hers. So without further ado, let's delve into Krista's inspiring journey and the invaluable lessons she's learned along the way. Welcome, Krista. Thank you so much. Thanks for the introduction and for having me. So tell us a little bit more about your family background, how long your firefighter has been with the department. So relatively newer as a fire wife and fire mom. My husband graduated from the academy in 2021. So just about almost going on the fourth year now. And we have two kids ages four and two. So your hubby started in 21 in the middle of pandemic. Yes. Yeah. It was super fun. So it was tough, honestly. I mean, obviously none of us knew how long it was going to last. Chicago was pretty strict with the lockdowns right away. And, you know, in real estate, it was a very busy time, which was great career wise. And also we were adapting to the shifts of everything. So, you know, that was very busy. I was also pregnant and had a two year old. And at that time, let's see, I guess he was in the academy right when COVID hit, so 2020. And then he graduated 2021. So he was gone pretty much every day, going to the academy for 2020 while I was home working with, you know, being pregnant and having our other child. And I was pretty isolated, honestly. We did everything with work via Zoom. And especially with my team, we're very, very connected, almost like a second family. So that was a big emotional switch for me. I'm just a person that needs to be around people. I need to have that connection and a vibe off of other people's energy. So it was tough. It was tough Okay. Tell us what it's like in a big city department, like Chicago Fire. We were just talking about this off the air. Chicago still has the, you know, you have to live within so many miles to actually be in the department, which we don't have that out here. There's no way. It's not possible. So give us like a little breakdown of how Chicago Fire operates. Sure. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's pretty strict rules. Like when he first got into the academy, there was actually somebody that came out to our house and made sure that we lived in the city grounds, came into our house, looked at everything in our house. It was pretty crazy. I had no idea that that was going to happen. I didn't know what to expect there. And then from there on, it was just pretty much known. And I mean, my husband did give me a heads up on that, but you know, we also never knew when exactly he would get called. I think he signed up for the list maybe like seven years ago or something. And so, you know, part of us were like, well, he might not ever get called because you can't get called past 40 years old. But then he did, he got called right in the start of COVID. And, you know, we just knew from there that he was going to accept it and go through it and graduate and be a firefighter in Chicago. And we were going to have to stay in the city for forever, pretty much. So that was definitely another mind shift for me and something I had to adapt to because I'm from Wisconsin. And I think somewhere in the back of my head, I was like, I think maybe we'll move back to Wisconsin and, you know, be closer and be out of the city life. But, yeah, it's not going to happen.
WTOP
"six month long" Discussed on WTOP
"Pronounce it's even harder to live with imagine jumping off the back of a pickup truck onto some rocks that's what it felt like when i was suffering from plantar fasciitis i was a runner who could no longer run and my foot pain impacted me both physically and emotionally coming to the good feed store was the first step to living my life pain -free after searching and trying so many other products i finally found relief with good feed art supports and they still keep me running now i get to help others who are struggling with plantar fasciitis to live their life pain -free maybe it's your turn is foot pain holding you back from living the life you love visit the good feed store today for a free personalized fitting and test walk the good feed store has locations in dc and baltimore and now open in frederick across from visit wegmans good feet dot com to book your appointment today or just stop by i'm jonathan cotton and we look forward to seeing you soon at the good feet store everything you need every time you listen wtop at twelve fifteen i'm mark lewis india has become the fourth country to successfully planned a spacecraft on the moon people are applauding let us all wait the lander with a rover inside touches down on the lunar surface sparking cheers and applause among the space scientists watching in the southern indian city of southern pole is an uncharted territory the scientists believe could hold vital reserves of a frozen water and precious metals as the country cements its growing prowess in space and technology after a failed attempt nearly four years ago india's made history by becoming the first entry to touchdown near the little explored south pole region enjoys the u s to save the union and china in achieving a new landing i'm charles diladevna taxpayers in virginia may get some money back as politicians in a budget talks the state has billions of dollars in surplus and a compromise may be closer between the republican led house and democrat led senate richmond times dispatch reports a new proposal would give single state taxpayers a single two hundred dollar rebate couples would get four hundred bucks the compromise would and the six month long negotiation over the state's one hundred sixty five billion dollar to your budget if negotiators reach an agreement governor glenn young can would call for a special general assembly session to vote on it look look at w t o p news it was a nineteen to ninety move a hit movie that became a tony nominated broadway musical and this sister act is hitting toby's dinner theater in columbia by the power invested in me it's is ready to eat i have a huge whoopee goldberg fans i'm gonna follow her to the end of the first ashley johnson more plays delores allowance singer and witness protection is forced to join a convent run by mother superior played by lynn sharp spears ashley has also played whoopee's role in the musical version of ghost at abuse so whoopee would be proud uh... the show the show runs at toby's dinner theater from august twenty fifth to november fifth jason fraley l -e -w two p news here's a quick look at the top stories were working on the first republican presidential debate takes place tonight but without former president trump the former president's right -hand man rudy juliani has reportedly just landed in georgia to surrender to authorities
Bitcoin Audible
"six month long" Discussed on Bitcoin Audible
"The key challenge with side chains is enabling the peg out of Bitcoin back to the Bitcoin main chain in a trustless way implementing this in an effective way is proving extremely difficult and is a key barrier to the success of side chains on Bitcoin of course this is not a problem if you do not want to use Bitcoin on the side chain but if you do then there is an issue. One can argue that the peg out mechanism is so important that it takes precedence over the side chain rules surely the side chain that users would want to follow is the one where peg out works rather than the side chain which their side chain node considered as valid with the most merged mining the solution proposed in BIP 300 is essentially relying on Bitcoin miners the idea is that the opportunity to peg out applies once every three months in a process on the side chain the side chain then produces a hash which commits to the side chain peg out transactions a Bitcoin miner is then expected to take this hash and include it in their Coinbase transaction the risk here is that the miner could be cheating and insert a different hash which commits to a transaction that steals all the funds to mitigate against this there is then a six month long voting process which occurs among the Bitcoin miners in order for the side chain withdrawal transaction to be valid over fifty percent of the miners must vote for a withdrawal in their Coinbase transaction over the next six months all blocks whether the block includes a vote or not count therefore if minor participation in the vote is lower than fifty percent then the funds cannot be redeemed the idea is that this long voting period helps prevent theft if a miner submits an invalid proposal according to the side chain rules the side chain community has six months to act the side chain community could engage in several actions to prevent the theft for example lobbying miners not to vote for the withdrawal or lobbying the Bitcoin community for a user-activated solve fork to block the theft transaction this minor voting system for sidechain peg out is controversial and has many significant weaknesses miners could steal the funds sidechain users need to trust the miners not to steal their funds minor apathy miners may not participate in the voting to a sufficient extent and therefore the funds may be stuck this uncertainty could prevent people from sending funds to new side chains or small side chains time-consuming redemption process the redemption process is quite slow and takes at least three months of course users could use atomic swaps to get their coins out of the chain earlier but in order for this to work there needs to be sufficient liquidity the long time delay could also cause price differentials between mainchain Bitcoin and sidechain Bitcoin in contrast a peg out transaction from arbitrum to the etherium mainchain takes about a week inability to initiate a sidechain peg out on demand in addition to being a slow process users would also be unable to initiate a withdrawal on demand and would need to wait for a scheduled peg out transaction which happens every three months therefore the time it takes to withdraw will be inconsistent depending on when the withdrawal is requested UASFs the security system to some extent depends on the threat of user-activated soft forks to deter thefts however some may argue that we should minimize the number of changes to the Bitcoin protocol and not adopt a system which makes soft fork Wars more frequent on the other hand bit 300 advocate and developer Fiat Jaff has written a list of reasons why a majority of miners would not want to steal from the sidechain and therefore may think that the threat of a user-activated soft fork is not necessary more complex network rules in order for Bitcoin nodes to assess the validity of some Bitcoin transactions clients would need to tally up votes in the coinbase transactions of historic Bitcoin blocks encourages miners to run the sidechain node miners may want to run the sidechain node in order to submit or vote on a peg out sidechain redemption request this therefore negates the advantages of blind merged mining as now miners may need to be running the node anyway for the peg outs in our view the above issues make the bit 300 peg out system somewhat weak however there appears to be no good peg out system for Bitcoin sidechains perhaps it's time to revisit the original blockstream sidechain fraud-proof ideas from 2014 again on the other hand 51% of the miners could also censor the fraud-proof transaction and therefore in the minor theft scenario we have similar risks as under bit 300 51% of the miners could steal sidechain funds in a way Paul's proposal embraces the reality that under any known peg out system for example fraud proofs actual proofs or ones with a central sidechain administrator signing withdrawals Bitcoin miners could either censor data fake data or cooperate with the administrator and steal the sidechain Bitcoin therefore rather than building one of those potentially unnecessary security systems bit 300 just gives the power to withdraw directly to the Bitcoin miners on the other hand adding a simple actual proof using Merkle roots and hash functions might have some benefits as it would make it more complicated for miners to steal funds the downside here is that it could give users a false sense of security mining economics and incentives in the second part of this article we are going to examine the mining economics and incentives of sidechains in particular the idea that sidechains could significantly increase mining costs for instance to remain competitive miners may need to validate the sidechains or perhaps perform complex MEV farming on the sidechain these high costs could cause mining centralization at the same time a bug or reorganization on the sidechain could cause problems for the main Bitcoin chain vertical integration firstly there is the claim that blind merge mining mitigates away most or even all of the above mining incentive problems with blind merge mining miners receive their compensation on the main chain in Bitcoin therefore this is just like a normal transaction fee from an incentive perspective if the fees are really large for example the size of aetherium fees this could cause issues such as fee sniping but in theory the situation should be no worse than if Bitcoin fees had organically increased to this level without a sidechain miners should never need to validate the sidechain or care if there is a sidechain reorganization sidechain validation and Bitcoin mining is separated by the auction process Bitcoiner Alex B has claimed that the above is not true and that blind merge mining may not solve all of these problems even with blind merge mining the situation is worse than with normal transaction fees because miners may vertically integrate their business models and run the sidechains themselves for example block building may not be sufficiently competitive in some small side chains therefore the sidechain block producers could only pass on 80% of their fee income to the miners earning a 20% profit margin Bitcoin miners could then decide to cut out the middleman validate the side chains themselves and generate more profits sidechain block producers may also require significant capital on hand to pay Bitcoin miners their fees before they can sell their sidechain rewards this could be burdensome therefore vertical integration could make sense as the capital would no longer be required with Bitcoin miners running the side chains many of the benefits of blind merge mining may no longer apply Ethereum MEV as evidence for this vertical integration claim Alex compares blind merge mining to a situation in aetherium in aetherium there is an attempted somewhat analogous separation between block producers and stakers with an auction separating them just like the proposed auction for the sidechain fees in blind merged mining in aetherium this is called proposer builder separation aetherium block producers would then pass on most of the aetherium transaction fees to the stakers in their candidate blocks and then the stakers are incentivized to select the candidate blocks with the highest fees the system has not been implemented in the aetherium protocol yet however it is implemented in flashbots MEV boost MEV boost has 93% adoption among aetherium stakers therefore for all practical purposes a proposer builder separation system already exists in aetherium according to a recent analysis conducted by eigen phi vertical integration between stakers and block producers within MEV boost may have increased considerably in the last few months to 45% by value compared to just 12.2% at the start of 2023 anecdotally eigen phi also mentioned that quote we just met a big validator who is doing block building during ethcc this is a very active issue in aetherium at the moment and therefore perhaps bitcoiners could wait and see how proposer builder separation plays out in aetherium before deciding to push ahead with bit 301 in advocating for sidechains one is likely to hope the sidechains will be successful and perhaps generate significant MEV opportunities extracting MEV can be highly complex capital intensive and expensive therefore this can be a centralizing force this represents a risk to clarify we're not claiming this is a reason to oppose sidechains for Bitcoin side chains offer many potential benefits and a successful Bitcoin sidechain generating a large amount of MEV could be highly desirable however we refute the claim that there are no risks or that all the MEV risks are solved by blind merge mining mining centralization debate economic arguments Paul Stortz has an interesting defense to the assertion that merged mined sidechains could increase mining costs and therefore increase mining centralization we mentioned the risks that merged mining could increase centralization pressure in our November 2020 blog post something that Paul picked up and refuted we are focusing on this point in this report as we consider an interesting economic argument about Bitcoin mining incentives not because it's especially important in considering the merits of drive chains Paul argues that merged mining costs are just like any other mining costs mining is supposed to have costs and be a competitive industry if weak miners can't handle the higher merged mining costs and therefore have to shut down that is fine that is just like if a miner cannot handle a higher difficulty adjustment and has to shut down we want strong miners to succeed and weak miners to fail that is the nature of competition therefore Paul asserts the higher cost associated with merge mining even the cost of MEV extraction is not a valid argument against merged mining while it is important to keep the cost of running a full node low to ensure the network is decentralized other mining costs should be considered differently it does not matter so much if these other costs are high Paul would no doubt believe that some of the people oppose merged mining based on a misconception as an artifact of the block size war people may wrongly oppose all mining cost increases while only full node costs matter perhaps that is part of bitcoins autoimmune disorder examples of possible Bitcoin mining costs purchase of cotton for a quote side business of selling t-shirts this cost has actually been considered in this context the cost of purchasing and maintaining swimming pools if the heat produced from mining is used to heat such pools the extra costs of more mining due to increased difficulty caused by bitcoins difficulty adjustment system the cost of researching the natural gas market if natural gas is used as a power source orphan risks costs associated with block propagation running merged mine sidechain nodes the cost of extracting MEV from sidechains employing accountants to produce financial statements for the miners purchasing land constructing a facility purchasing asics ASIC maintenance costs purchasing electricity from the power company hiring lobbyists to argue for more favorable mining legislation from the government employment of lawyers to patent mining processes purchasing mining licenses from the government if required in a way Paul is right here running a sidechain can be thought of as just another cost and should be evaluated as such Paul is certainly correct that these other costs should be considered very differently to full node costs which it is critical to keep low however our view is that just because it is another cost that does not negate any economic disadvantages the cost may have if we care about the decentralization of mining we would prefer that the mining industry has certain economic characteristics low barriers to entry low economies of scale and a high degree of competitiveness if any of Bitcoin mining costs jeopardize some of these features it seems reasonable to argue that if possible we consider trying to minimize these costs for example if a government wanted to impose an expensive mining license with high upfront fees that is something big winners may want to oppose on the other hand the cost of the higher difficulty adjustment does not seem to undermine the desired economic cost characteristics if merged mining could cause a higher barrier to entry for example due to expensive MEV extraction opportunities this may be something to be concerned about even if there are also other costs which may also cause problems that is not to say we consider this problem a significant weakness of merge mining nor is it a reason to oppose bit 301 this is merely an interesting economic argument after all we have already experienced mass adoption of merge mining schemes from the Bitcoin miners anyway and bit 301 is not likely to make this potential problem worse if we do ever have a successful sidechain on Bitcoin the benefits of the fees this generates may outweigh the disadvantages of the possible higher centralization pressure conclusion the peg-out mechanism in bit 300 appears to have many weaknesses and adds a reasonable amount of complexity to the Bitcoin protocol therefore in our view it may struggle to achieve the consensus needed for activation on the other hand we have not yet seen a peg-out mechanism design that is strictly superior to bit 300 blind merge mining is certainly a potential improvement over the current quote regular merge mining and therefore it may be worth the added complexity to try and enable this in Bitcoin claiming that blind merged mining solves all the risks is a somewhat fanciful claim in our view however a successful blind merge mine sidechain with significant MEV opportunities could offer Bitcoin significant benefits and therefore it could be worth the risks this show is brought to you by the cold card hardware wallet if you own Bitcoin or you think you own Bitcoin and it's on an exchange please dear God just get a cold card and withdraw it you don't own it when it's on coinbase or some other popular exchange that is destined to get regulated into hell they hold the keys with the cold card those keys are yours and yours alone and neither coinbase nor even the president of the United States can take those coins from you if they are behind your keys they are yours right now with an exchange you hold an IOU a promise from a centralized regulated financial institution that they will send you Bitcoin maybe if you request it from them but I can tell you right now promises are worth next to nothing in this environment that is why you get a cold card you hold cryptographic proof not a promise and it's secure from hackers from governments from third parties everywhere this is why we use hardware wallets it's Bitcoin only highly secure they have a long-standing reputation they have an open build it is easy to use and frankly it's just a cool device get 9% off with code Bitcoin audible all one word that is a 9% discount with my code and there is a link right in the show notes so go check them out so the reason I wanted to cover this piece which I kind of said at the beginning is that I think it's a pretty thorough and a really fair investigation of drive chains and what's funny is that if there was a very very low barrier to entry here in the sense of executing a drive chain I wouldn't be I wouldn't have this tendency to be against it but just in breaking down the and they I find it interesting that bitmex research puts a what I think is a more proper framing of the economic issue of the economic game theory of the drive chain and how it kind of changes the dynamic and the fact that it alters the profitability or the the game theory or the relationship the direct relationship between the miners and the chain itself that between explicitly Bitcoin and explicitly Bitcoin miners I think whether or not it appears that the path of least resistance is still in support or is in is basically through cooperation I think it changes the dynamic enough that it makes it messier and you know Paul when Paul uses the excuse or the argument whatever you want to call it the the framing that this is just another cost of miners and miners have lots of costs and that you know that that trade-off is simply there with all of these other things and you list these possible costs that I think the silly one was which obviously they can kind of have a t-shirts side business selling t-shirts but all the having a facility purchasing a six maintenance calls electricity all of these sorts of things and you know legislation needs to be favorable is that I think the whole idea is that how do we work overtime how do we make changes to Bitcoin if we are making changes to Bitcoin that eliminates these costs like I don't think these costs are good things they are barriers to entry and they list these like three points of you want it to be low barriers to entry you want it to be a low economies of scale you don't want it to be you know orders of magnitude better for someone to have you know a peta hash in one facility than it is easy to just set up you know a couple of miners because if there's a huge outsize benefit like if there's an 80% discount somehow in the economies of scale there well then you basically just price out essentially the decentralization of the mining community because no one if there's a if there's an 80% margin no one is ever going to be able to compete at a small scale now there is the the hopeful caveat that the heat actually has a purpose like a great example is that I set up my miners really easily I was a bit shocked actually outside of the fact that because I got miners that can't plug into a normal plug like you had to have a 220 plug like a dryer plug and so I had to get I had to install you know an outlet for a 220 plug and a breaker which I know is probably in the next level project for a lot of people like oh my god I have to hire an electrician or I have to watch a YouTube video and figure out how to do this but if you're inclined and you you know you can't watch it you know the basic safety of electricity you can do that it's actually not that hard and I plugged it I did it right next to my breaker box so I didn't really have to run a line right but aside from that the barrier to getting it up and running was actually a lot lower than I thought it seemed the project itself seemed a lot more intimidating than it was in actual execution which I think is really great and the fact that I wasn't really worried about profitability because I'm using these things as heat or I was using them as heat in the winter now they're sitting dormant which is a little sad but every once in a while there's like a spike in productivity or excuse me in profitability or a spike in fees with the ordinals and stuff and so I get it they they end up finding their way back on even when it's a hundred degrees outside but regardless when I think about the system of mining and um increasing a level of cost in order to get a margin that other miners that larger miners miners with a greater economy of scale have access to because they can run a sidechain with vastly more bandwidth or vastly more computational cost and I think that's really what we're talking about here is that the nature of a sidechain is going to be like just kind of the very idea itself is that we're raising the bandwidth specifically for the purpose of getting more bandwidth right is we're creating a second layer or a subnet of an additional broadcast network it just has an enormous amount of information being transmitted and that's why we have the the broadcast network of Bitcoin and then the unicast network of lightning right is there's an enormous amount of cost in broadcasting every single message to every single node on the network so you have a unicast network in lightning where the message only goes to the intended recipient and the and travels through the path necessary in order to get there and all of the nodes it's it's not relevant to any other nodes so I think regardless of whether or not we want to dismiss the increased cost I think it is completely fair to say there is an increased cost but but even if any like so going back to the idea of like decreasing those costs that's why I think stratum v2 like if that needed a soft fork for some reason obviously doesn't it separate but if that needed a soft fork well for anybody who doesn't know stratum v2 is a way to do mining pools where you have bunch of miners get together and still basically have autonomy with the minor individual minor in selecting the blocks so right now the pool itself even though you can just log out and you can log into a different pool it is still a rather controversial I guess form of centralization in the sense that the pool itself is gathering the blocks together and all of the miners the thousands of miners tens of thousands however many who are plugged into this thing are then trusting that pool to construct the right block and if they don't well or if they do so maliciously well then you won't know it until after it's been sent out so like I use brains pool or I have used brains pool and if they ever constructed a malicious block I would obviously just log out and I would switch to a different pool but it would be after they execute after they caused a problem that I would realize I had contributed to a bad block or a malicious transaction or an attempt at a reorg or something like that so it would only be a reactionary adjustment whereas stratum b2 lets me construct my own block so if I ever find the block or if I'm ever contributing anything I know exactly what I'm contributing to it is my node that is determining the transaction order and the fees so like I could be a part of brains and even if brains isn't excluding ordinals maybe I want to maybe I do want to exclude ordinals and I'm it's up to me now if that required a soft fork I think that would be a very legitimate argument or a strong argument for a soft fork again this protocol has nothing to do with actual Bitcoin it's just a communication protocol between computers but if it required a change in Bitcoin I think that would be a strong argument because you're talking about a change that specifically lowers centralization risk that specifically is trying to lower the barrier or the economies of scale and these sorts of things and I think if the sidechain proposal if drive chains made a had a very strong argument for lowering those costs and benefiting that um that dynamic I think would have a far far greater case especially if it came with the other potential utility of being able to make whatever shitcoin or whatever smart contracts or whatnot that the sidechain can do so just in even the just the nature of excusing that or just dismissing it is kind of the better argument or the better framing I think is that we're dismissing the fact that there is an additional cost and I think no matter what we do we should be lowering costs because we're likely to find ourselves in places where additional costs can be put on us what can be put on the nodes can be put on the miners without even recognizing or realizing that that cost was necessarily a part of it a great example is actually ordinals and inscriptions is that the amount of UTXO bloat that occurs with owning a SAT because it's you know some specific ordinal or having someone embed a gif into the blockchain for no freaking reason at all and having all of this like I think the somebody was making note of it or keeping track of it is that the UTXO size which is something that has to be kept in RAM has grown by 40% since this ordinals shit has started started I keep using them interchangeably since the inscriptions stuff has started and I think you can tie them together I think because inscriptions specifically rely on ordinals if I'm not mistaken I could be I could be wrong about that doesn't really matter um but this idea of using arbitrary data putting arbitrary data into the Bitcoin chain and using it not for the Bitcoin ownership not for the transaction itself but just using it as a pointer to some generic data an image you know scan a photocopy of somebody's but a literally a porn gif there's like porn gifts like somebody have used shitty porn gifts and stuck them into the blockchain so that's literally on my node and then you know a bunch of pictures of monkeys and all this stupid crap just typical crypto garbage so that's an unexpected and rather significant like not an existential crisis not like the end of the world but yet a significant increase in cost that was not expected or at least not in explicitly intended or planned for and every single time we broaden the use or every single time we introduce some new element that that always exists and I think my hesitancy to support something like this has only increased with time now if the peg-out mechanism if bib 300 was just profoundly better was just an incredibly secure and incredibly clean way to enter and exit the sidechain if we had figured out that part of it which I really don't think anybody has I know the roll-ups on etherium haven't like it just seems to be the same sort of dynamic at every turn that there even if you anchor it to another chain with another set of more concrete rules or more higher reliability or higher assurance it still seems that you you continue to have the consensus problem on the sidechain and the peg-out still relies on the rules or the makeup of the sidechain which means you have a consensus challenge within a consensus challenge so you're basically having you need another Bitcoin right you kind of need to extend that same issue to a new place and that's why there doesn't seem to be a very clean solution to it and while you could argue that that peg-out mechanism is better it's still just relying on a different set of parties maybe because it's permissionless in the sense that anybody can just jump on in mine we could call that better we could call that superior to something like liquid that has like you know what 67 known entities around the world in a bunch of different jurisdictions and they're all signing for it well if we have miners voting on it maybe that's better but honestly I'm not convinced that it is I think it's messy enough that you kind of have to make the case whether or not it's better like it's not intuitively obvious to me and it doesn't seem clear to me that it's a better option it's just a different option and I think because we're talking about something at the base layer if it kind of needs an experiment in order to determine like we need to see it in real life and with real capital and with the real game theory played out very similar to how we saw the block size war and the history of Bitcoin we saw it play out like we had these ideas that maybe this theory or this game this game theory dynamic does in fact secure Bitcoin and does in fact mean that we can defend Bitcoin from malicious change we don't know we don't know and I think even even the way that Bitcoin succeeded in that task was different than the way Satoshi had intended or Satoshi had suspected would be the case is that he saw the mining community be far more decentralized and he saw no separation between nodes and miners like when Bitcoin was originally when he was originally talking about miners everyone was running a node but after a couple of years those jobs got separated where you would mine without running a node and you would run a node without mining and now there were these two completely different pools of users and it wasn't one CPU one vote because nobody mined with CPU anymore and then nobody mined with the GPU and then nobody mined with the FPGA we had or FGPA field programmable gate array so FPGA sorry now we are all on ASIC so we had dedicated expensive hardware that did nothing but mine Bitcoin so did I the dynamic the power dynamic and the people or the players in the ecosystem were very different in 2013 2014 then they were in 2011 2010 and so as these new ideas about how to scale and how to the direction and the path that Bitcoin would take in the new dynamics between the separate players and who had power over who so to speak in the industry came to light and they got tested while we were you know everybody's trying to figure out like 2015 that's when the lightning dropped 2014 that was the bit 300 and drive chains and everything though there's tons of discussion about how the direction that this thing was going in and it wasn't until 2017 that we really everybody laid their cards on the table like they laid the cards on the table and we saw what was going to happen when how anyone was able to genuinely calls or force a change on the network and to what extent they could or could not and it was funny that the nodes I think even some of the people on the quote-unquote small blocker side the people who were you doing user-activated soft work even some of them may have misunderstood like they now think that nodes run the network when they don't the idea is that any major dynamic any major part of the network itself or I guess the demographics at play is able to prevent a change not instill a change so one thing that they do really well in bitmex research Jonathan beer specifically does such a good job in the block size war the book about this whole part of history is Bitcoin history is that he talks about how the big blockers quote-unquote could have won by preventing Segwit that they actually had a card to play that they could have actually succeeded they could have stopped the user-activated soft fork and made it understood the reason the user-activated soft work was gonna work against their hard fork that the fact that a minority can prevent a change but a minority and or a small majority cannot force a change because the consensus because the shelling point is to not change in the face of contention or a split of the value of the network it is always going to grab it the gravity is going to pull towards the way it works today is that they could have stopped Segwit in for the same reason that the user-activated soft fork stop the hard fork to two megabyte base blocks but the reason they thought they were going to hard fork and they were gonna get all the exchanges and the miners the mining pools on board and they were gonna force this change on the network and they were going to succeed is the exact same reason they didn't realize they could have beat this off the UA that UASF or stop the UASF from getting Segwit now the blind merge mining of drive chains the bit 301 I think by itself is a is a useful addition but I don't think well actually here's lens itself to creating a profitability for miners a margin for miners that is separate from Bitcoin itself now there has been merge mining regardless and it hasn't really meant that this potential negative externality has been relevant at all like name coin is merge coin being like a groundbreaking success and like orders you know half the size of Bitcoin it just doesn't seem likely or at least it wasn't the case so I just don't think it's a good example of what could potentially happen because it's simply it it's negligible but I think the whole point of having like if we go through all of this to have a soft fork and have these rather big changes and you know start up a bunch of these like really big side chains that we want all the miners involved in and we want them blind merge mind mining like more than 51% network right like we want like overwhelming consensus for these things it necessitates the fact that we want them to be a success we want them to be pulling in in AV which is minor extracted value but it just means that a miner is able to get rewards or get income from some secondary thing in this case the sidechain but by doing something else with their mining hardware now this is where I am not so I'm not 100% sure I like the dynamics now maybe this is inevitable and because you know we want to repurpose hardware we want things to be as valuable as they can be it's good to have dual purpose things but I think one of the reasons Bitcoin is secure is because you can't do anything else with it you know when you buy a six for Bitcoin mining you don't buy it for any or any other reason it is purely an investment in Bitcoin so when everybody was talking about like the the shitcoin space was all gung-ho about dual purpose mining is it like oh we're gonna mine for this coin but we're also gonna protein fold oh we're gonna mine but it's also gonna be proof of storage or something like that I don't know they had all the they just went through this whole range of like selling proof of blah proof of blah and oh we can use it for this and this the idea that there's a secondary purpose that isn't being used for Bitcoin or a profitable reason to have the machine not securing Bitcoin I think is actually a vulnerability if you think about it it means that someone who is investing a billion dollars into hardware could use it to secure Bitcoin or they could just use it to do something else and they can use it to do this other the secondary purpose which might be and again blind merge mining sort of makes this well obviously you would use it for both because you can use it for both at once but just the we're just talking about more the concept of MEV in general is the idea of a secondary use case that I think this would apply more in the context of a shitcoin where a completely different token has some significant amount of value and necessarily is competing with the value of Bitcoin or any and all other tokens because you can only hold value in one thing at one time but that's specifically why I think the direction that aetherium has gone is actually a vulnerability not necessarily and it may be one of those things that it works for a really long time until it doesn't and you know that could be the same with in the case of a sidechain where you know you can trust the miners and there might be not a whole lot of incentive to steal from the sidechain until that's not the case anymore and it it's at least important to recognize that the dynamic is different than the main chain like no matter what the miners do no matter how much they're mad at somebody they can't steal the coins from somebody they can't undo the keys they can't make a key negligible they could maybe revert try to you know dig through history for a thousand blocks or a hundred thousand blocks which is extremely unlikely as we went through with a couple of lops pieces on the assurances of how many blocks and the likelihood of a reorg but nonetheless obviously that is possible the history is secured by the mining forcefield so to speak but you can't undo the keys you can't undo the rules those are basically set by the nodes and if it is behind my keys they can't just take them my keys aren't dependent on hash power they have nothing to do with it the settlement of a transaction today or immediately in this block is dependent on how much hash power there is in front of it and so whatever is at the chain tip is the most vulnerable but if I've got you know a hundred thousand blocks deep and I have keys I've been holding some Bitcoin on the Bitcoin chain for years there's no no amount of miners can and can take that from me but maybe there is an argument for the utility for the amount of added value to the ecosystem at large that it could provide because of the breadth of what you could accomplish with it it is essentially a subnet of Bitcoin like this is the very use this is the same argument of liquid of lightning really even though lightning is a bit of a different dynamic and it's more of kind of a interoperable a kind of a universal interconnecting network of all of these other ones like I don't think I think less of lightning as a subnet and more of a I think the relationship with the as something like a channel pool would be a subnet liquid is kind of a subnet of Bitcoin Fedemint is a subnet of Bitcoin and I think drive chains would be could be thought of as a a wide area sort of subnet is a segment and in fact actually the one of the pieces we have read god knows how long ago about this on Thunder chains or Thunder networks is exactly in that vein in that idea of like oh well you can have a North America South America and in Africa Asia if you'd have these huge major separate networks at all essentially coalesced or they coincide they all settled to the global network that is Bitcoin and I like that idea conceptually I think that's a really great or a really cool way to think about it except that there's a really big caveat with drive chains specifically is that not only does it seem that the the questions or the degree of security involved is messy the the way it's set up isn't again the peg-out mechanism is not some perfect mechanism if it was fundamentally like orders of magnitude better than the way liquid is doing it then it would be it would seem obvious to me that okay we should we should have this like a peg-out mechanism for generic side chains I think is a really good thing and and that would be great to have and if we do solve that in a really really fundamental way wherever where the users keys are the only way to get out or the only way to exit and that's why arc is so interesting to me even though it has its trade-offs and it doesn't scale very well in the sense of having a bunch of different arcs it's kind of a ultra high liquidity requirement singular network like you can only have like a handful of arcs at any one time because they basically fill up the blocks with transactions and they don't work at small scale they are in the sense that the user always have has revocation rights within like that two-week time lock which we talked about in the arc episode but regardless it's a little bit of a distraction the if the peg-out system was excellent and there wasn't this long wait which is kind of required in order to have the voting mechanism really serve its purpose in making sure that people on the side chain are secure or that they they can counter a colluding set of miners trying to steal or malicious transactions or just errors in the side chain in going back to the main chain if it didn't require this three month and six month relationship or delay and it was more kind of concrete it was more like set in stone the obvious winner of the situation then I think it would just be beneficial just on its face whether or not we were talking about drivetrains specifically is that just a a robust user owner like like like owner specific and owner directed peg-out mechanism I think is a bit like the Holy Grail of the subnets and the side chains idea of Bitcoin and even potentially better than what we have I don't think it's a very strong case that it's obviously better and I think the trade-offs are as significant or even more so than a lot of the trade-offs we already have to deal with with the alternative peg-out mechanisms except that it comes with the really huge caveat of always needing soft forks and this is the thing that really kind of set me.
TalkRadio 630 KHOW
"six month long" Discussed on TalkRadio 630 KHOW
"Our vest era funnel system allows us and therefore you to invest in the safest the fastest growing and the most economically lucrative areas in the United States. That's how it's done. See the whole program. By the way, I'm adding this piece, see the whole program Larry for yourself as a listener as a potential wealth builder as a real wealth builder coming any role that you want Saturday, September 25th that's only two weeks away. Get your reservation in the seats are limited. Where? Not quite full, though, but almost so, so give us a call. Give us a text at 3038883788. Again. Get your reservation in totally free. No cost? No, none of that stuff. No follow up costs of any kind. We don't even follow up unless just tell us. It's okay to do that. Okay, but text or call us for your reservation at 303. 8883788. Larry. Yeah, Barium. Just curious. This sounds like a very intensive process doesn't require a lot of time for us to Select cities. It sure does. Okay, that's put it out there in the truthful setting. It sure does these 500 cities get down to 200 ish pretty quickly, Okay In a matter of a day or two, Okay, that's with two people working on it, okay? Gets down to 200. But after that, it's weeks, weeks of work and and and, and the system of thorough research itself is worth it for customers because it yields them, then the highest return and minimal, minimal risk. Okay, There has to be a huge upheaval of economic conditions in the United States, not just that city. That's one of the criteria. We don't have cities with fewer than 330,000 population. So one company could go out of business in the Denver metro area, and it's not going to affect the overall economy. So these cities are carefully chosen. You bet. So out of time, however. We? The researchers enjoy that time. Also. Well, then how often do we review the data on these cities? Good. That's that's really a good question to again annually. We go from beginning like we've never done it before, even though we have all those years of data. But we do it once a year at the end of the year, the fourth quarter. Okay? Because the census data comes out in October, the National Association of Realtors does 200 plus cities. Uh, in in October, uh, September and October, So the last quarter is our big big review, but then significantly large quarterly reviews every calendar quarter. We analyze our top 25 to 30 cities to see. Are there any changes in there? Is there any city like Phoenix that should bump out another city like Dallas That happened over a year ago. Phoenix in in that year period. Had more solid economic news that it was going to be stronger for a three year period. Then Dallas, Texas did. So, yes, Larry, once a year, big, big, big time and then quarterly, big time. Three quarters out of the year. Um Barry, when we do this analysis we're looking at well over 55 data points. Is that correct? Well, over 55, you know, we're putting it together. Scientifically. Now to see is a 55 or 65. Okay, We know it's over 55. But we have a strict definition of what a data point is. And typically, it has to be raw data. Not somebody's opinion. We don't have opinions. We let the data speak, or we share our opinions, but they're irrelevant. They always get put down by the other two members of the research team, and until all three thumbs of the researchers are up on a particular item or particular economic Uh, data point. Okay. Um, it's not acceptable. We have to do more research because until the data clearly points out a clear picture and speaks to us We're not finished with our research. That's why it's so extensive and that that I got to go further because I haven't mentioned this. We continue to do this on behalf of our customers, Larry and then they get insights from us way ahead of time for market tweaks market little potential changes that they've gone up unexpectedly. That could happen one of those 55 points. Or one or two of them may be tweaked down. We watch that and let our customers know about that, so that if we sense in the data tells us to sense this, But the data tells us that there's going to be a slowdown in a particular city. We may just ask them to consider selling that property in the next six months. Long before the real estate community even senses that there's any changes coming, then our customers don't lose money by holding on for a few more years until that economy returns. We're not into that stock. Market. While street Game. Yeah, We don't expect you to take losses every three years and just walk away saying Well, I made money to out of those three years or wait six more years than it will come back to making money again. That's not our approach. Find out what our approaches find out about the whole system. By the way, Attend sign up, please. We encourage you to We will. Larry always says, Why don't more people come? Why, Larry? Because we're gonna look at that a little bit in my world of savvy investors. We're going to look a little bit into that today into my segment. When which we'll get to after break, But for now, get your reservation in. Give us a text at 3038883788 all we need Is your name and your email and we'll have your number because you texted it in or call us and.
KGO 810
"six month long" Discussed on KGO 810
"Police are investigating another homicide at East 12th Street and 17th Avenue. This one is this is near a homeless encampment. It's not clear if the victim was living at the camp are simply just in the area at the time. Oakland has had nearly 70 homicides so far this year. San Jose police say a six month long investigation has led to an arrest in a major bicycle theft ring. Officers served a search warrant on the home of Jose Guadalupe Barbara, the alleged head of the underground bicycle fencing ring in the south bait. $100,000 worth of stolen bikes, construction tools and miscellaneous other goods were seized. Theft of bicycles during the pandemic has nearly doubled since 2019 in San Jose. Even with this arrest, authorities say there are plenty of other would be thieves still out there. Experts say you should hold on to your proof of purchase and your serial number. And they say Registering with the place like bike index is a good idea. Authorities are trying to track down the owners of the seas property. I'm Terry Ross. Kgo 8 10, California lawmakers will wait until next year to continue considering a bill that would give opioid users a place to inject drugs in supervised settings. State Senator Scott Wiener says he was told the Assembly Health Committee will delay a hearing on his bill until January. The measure would allow Oakland, San Francisco and L. A county to start programs, giving people Place to inject drugs while trained staff are available to help if they overdose. Currently, the sites are illegal in the United States. Although Canada has legalized them. A member of the Oakland A's has been chosen to compete in the home run. Derby also drives one left center deep and that baby is good. First baseman Matt Olsen will represent the Athletics and Tuesdays All Star.
Odd Lots
"six month long" Discussed on Odd Lots
"Is the first time that we've even heard of a big bump in by hesitancy what we're hearing things like buyers are coming in and they're worried about buying at the top or buyers coming in and they're saying you know i was looking at this house last month than it was thirty thousand dollars below where it was today. I don't want to jump in today or you guys may have seen if you sign a contract with a builder. Sometimes if if the builder has written their contract right the builder can come back to you and say our prices have gone out and we're not going to cover that entire cost so we're going to split that with you so i know you thought you bought this home for three hundred thousand but i need you to bring thirty or forty thousand extra dollars to the table. So that's we're seeing a lot of headlines on that and true this is truly happening. But i think there's some people that are saying. I'm not sure. I want to commit to one price and then have my price go up so we are seeing in you. Use the right phrase what we're calling the buyers protests we are seeing the start of buyers protest for the first time i wouldn't say it's that demand has fallen off because we haven't truly seen that impact sales yet it's just when builders are planning forward they'll say wow our interest list is at one example we heard in in the mountain region is two years long so that two years long interest list could become six months long if prices go up too much people are saying no no now like Homes not worth it. I'm not gonna buy. It's like the first derivative of this. The second derivative of demand is starting to slow down. Yeah you are starting to see that. And i think what i'm trying to make sense of. And i don't have the fool answer is if you do have so many people sitting on the sidelines. Waiting for prices to come down if prices reset does it start the frenzy. All over again. And i guess it depends on where mortgage rates are but again using myself as an example. We want to buy a movie house. But i'm not going to go into the market right now. But if the market slows or softens..
WSJ Your Money Briefing
"six month long" Discussed on WSJ Your Money Briefing
"When the may jobs report is released tomorrow it's expected to show some improvement over april's hiring slowdown but that will still reflect millions of people remaining on the labor market sidelines. Not ready to rejoin the workforce so had a businesses convince workers to come back our economics. Reporter k davidson has been talking to business leaders and following the political debate in washington. And she's with us now to discuss kate. Thanks for taking the time to chat. Thanks for having me so. Let's start with trouble that employers are having filling slots how big a problem has become well. We've certainly been hearing from employers for awhile now. Several months that they've been having a hard time finding workers in this any sort of economic downturn. So is a big debate about whether you know. This is really a problem with employers You know they're really workers not willing to work or are employers just not offering enough money but there there is some data that can help us figure this out a little bit so we know that job. Openings reached a record level At the end of march there's eight point one million job openings and that's reflective of a widening gap between open positions and workers who are willing and able to take those roles so there there is some truth to this but it's still sort of an open question about why this is happening and there's many millions of people out of work You know still a big hole here from this pandemic recession But there's a question about why people aren't taking these jobs right now. Now we talk for a while in washington about ending the extra three hundred dollars in weekly unemployment benefits as a way to encourage workers to get back into the labor market. What's the latest on that this that you just mentioned of. Course that's one of the reasons that employers and i think republicans business groups are pointing to for why workers are coming back Since last year actually congress agreed at the beginning of the pandemic to basically expand jobless benefits. They were giving people more money than they ordinarily would get in their weekly benefit checks Last summer it was six hundred dollars. It was scaled back to three hundred. But people still say that this is pretty large and so the those payments are set to expire after labor day. We only have a few more months of them so. I don't think it's likely that congress is going to do anything but what we have seen in. Recent weeks is states. Governors mostly republican governors announcing. We're going end this early. They appear to have the ability to to do that. They have that discretion. The biden administration hasn't really challenged them on this although some democrats have urged them to but basically for a number of people in those states in the next few weeks. Those extra payments will be ending. Yeah those federal unemployment benefits have become a political issue. Can you walk us through the debate and discuss what the researchers who looked into the issue say about it so the research has suggested if we look at the beginning of the pandemic. There was some research looking these initial payments. Which as i mentioned br much bigger they were six hundred dollars and back then The research found that they weren't really a major factor in keeping people out of work in other words. If we think about what was happening se in april and may even in june businesses. Were shut down. I mean many people are out of work because the place they worked had closed also. The government wanted people to stay home. That's part of the reason. They made these benefits so generous. Didn't want people spreading the virus. They wanted Businesses and then some cases ordered businesses to close so that was one reason when argument for making these very generous the flip side of that now What republicans are saying is look. The economy is really doing well We've seen hiring you know really pick up. The the unemployment rate has come way down. We know that employers are hiring. We see these record job openings. We don't need these these extra payments to be so generous. If people want a job they can find one. So democrats on the flip side are saying look people are still worried. Many people about getting sick Possibly even though vaccinations are picking up. But they're saying that could be a major reason also. A lot of people are still out of work because they don't have child care for their children. I mean schools have reopened but in a number of places it's not fully reopened daycares. You're not back to their full Normal operating hours and so the biden administration has said look. This is this is temporary. We expect that over the summer and in the fall when schools reopened Hiring will pick up again in. This won't be as much of an issue. The lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at the federal and the state level are working on proposals to encourage people to get back to work. Let's start in congress. There are a few proposals on the table. Right right there have been some proposals introduced and it's interesting because as we were just saying that. Debate has centered around the three hundred. Should it stay or should it go but beneath the surface there's interesting conversations about okay. How how can we get workers to come back. So republicans in congress and at the state level have proposed in a number of places hiring bonuses so offering people a thousand dollars one time payment to take a job and we've seen some companies start to do that but i think that it's interesting that them one idea would be to have the federal government do it at the state level. Some states are actually using the money that they got from the one point nine trillion dollar covert relief package remember. There was all that state and local aid money. They're using some of that for hiring bonuses Democrats have Put forward a couple of proposals to help bring disadvantage workers. Back into the labor force on folks who've been unemployed for more than six months long term unemployment can be especially risky for folks. It's just harder for them to get back in on. That can come with all sorts of long-term harm so their proposals have focused. More on that on getting Getting those groups back in Sort of subsidies for job creation programs for those folks so you mentioned the idea of a hiring bonus that would be paid by the states and some employers are offering signing bonuses too but what else are employers trying to do to bring workers back well a big point that democrats have made and i think labor advocates is that look Employers should raise their wages if they want to attract workers. So i talked to someone for this story. That had a senior official. At the international franchise association. They represent all kinds of small business owners. That have franchises in his point was yes. That's something that is happening. Certainly wages are going up to attract workers and that happens normally in a tight labor market but You know there's only so much in their view that you can pass on to consumers if you raise wages that's a higher cost for you and you might pass that on. Well we know that prices are rising right now anyway The cost of goods are up. And so i think that they're saying well that's a little bit of a concern for them whether they can do that. I'm vicious generally again in a tight labor market you see folks offering better sort of side benefits and little incentives to bring people back in. It might be more vacation time. It might be slightly better benefits. And so we're starting to see some of that but But i think that the policies that are getting the most attention or these sort of just hard cold hard cash right assign a mcdonald's the other day so sign at taco bell you know a thousand dollar bonus just just to come in and and get a job and of course workers have to weigh that against okay. How many more months of unemployment would be eligible for. And that's sort of the question for them. Okay but lowering workers back with incentives is one thing but keeping them around as another our employers struggling with offering you know one often centers versus higher. Weekly wages right. A higher salary is a cost. That's going to stay You know you can't you can't just lure someone in with a offer of twenty dollars an hour and tell them a couple of months later okay. I'm i'm cutting your pay two to seventeen or sixteen. I think that they're going for this idea of the bow these one time bonuses And perhaps seeing that sure it's a big cost for them but it's worth it because You know we've seen a lot of places that are saying well. We can't even operate at full capacity. We can't meet the demand right now that we're seeing as the economy heats up as people are wanting to go out to eat more travel. We're hearing lawyers say we're losing money. We're losing business because we don't have the staff so it's worth it to pay. Perhaps in their view a thousand dollars to bring someone in but they're not quite in a place where they wanna be permanently offering higher wages. At least at least broadly. I mean we are seeing wages somewhat but right that is that's attention right now on the labor market or this wall street journal reporter k davidson kate. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me the metro. Money briefing im. Jr waylon for the wall street journal..
Talk 1260 KTRC
"six month long" Discussed on Talk 1260 KTRC
"Right? Thought you would have thought you would I play the music just for you. You mean Michael is a He is music addict in any Nike and find amount slumming at the club somewhere in Austin, Texas. You used to cut up until used to could endemic But now I'm back. I'm going back out. Back out on the club scene. Yeah. All right. Public citizen is what real quickly. We are a consumer advocacy organization based out of Washington, DC We've been around for about 40 years. It was launched by Ralph Nader. Way Back in the day, we sense branched out from consumer advocacy to a whole host of issues and D. C that we advocate on health care. Um, uh, We're not doing a lot of stuff with big Tech now and in Texas. We have an office and our focus here in Texas is on energy and the environment primarily, you know, trying to get the petrochemical companies down here to clean up their act and, you know, advocating for clean sources of energy is our primary focus here in the Lone Star state. All right? Um, the legislative session in Texas ended yesterday, the day before. Monday Monday, especially those Sinus finally die. Yeah. Six months long their legislative session It was a long, weird six months in Texas with coated and the Legislature and they're sometimes wacky agenda. You know, I covered in New Mexico Legislature for a couple sessions 20 years ago. I thought that was in our entertaining and this strange that I think Texas has had yelled, Beat. You're a model of efficiency and deport him down there or over there, I should say. All right, so, Yeah, you guys He ended it on a weird now, with the Democrats leaving on hitting the road running away, so there'd be no quorum on it was hilarious to watch. You know, the Republicans saying there goes in the womb, the gavel gavel. We're adjourned. No corn on the last time last time I remember they did this. They actually came to New Mexico. And I think they came on Willie Nelson's bus. Or at least I was that Willie Nelson concert at his letter, and he introduced all the All the Democrats from Texas and they were there. Yeah, and they all had big smiles. When the state troopers like dispatch, try to go get them, right? Yeah, I missed that drama in Mexico that must have been in the mid 90. Um yeah, Or was it later anyway? Uh, we have sort of something, I guess kind of similar. They didn't leave this state, but we definitely some high drama late Sunday. Um, you know, just moments before the deadline capacity bills. Uh, expired on Democrats like having nothing left legislating the legislative arsenal toe Do they walked out on this was over the voter suppression election, right? Bills that the Republicans have been pushing off session. It came all the way down to the wire. They walked out tonight. The house of Coram and they were the Republicans were not able to pass that bill and get it to the governor. So Probably looking at a special session on this issue later this summer, maybe early fall. But the fight, I think has really just begun. You know, during this session, you know, we and others were constantly calling attention to what we thought were Really bad voter suppression measures in this bill, and you know, I think the fight will only intensify the months ahead before we get back to back to business, but Republican bills Do you still have, you know, majority and both House and Senate So it's gonna be it's gonna be hard. Our guest, Michael Kamen from Public Citizen. He's down in Austin, Texas. So what is the Republican argument here? Is it election security? What of the argon? We don't like people who aren't white. I mean, what's their argument? They didn't quite make that argument and plenty of plain language. You know, they Definitely Present. This is a matter of election security. You know they constantly claiming that there's all these cases of fraud in Texas Senator Brian's used was on CNN yesterday, the day before he was the author of the Senate. FT seven The Senate bill, saying that we had hundreds of open cases of voter fraud in this state and Briana Keeler, the host, rightfully pointed out that that was Flatly untrue. We had maybe 40 open cases of voter fraud in this state out of you know, millions of ballots cast so that they do frame it is an election security issue and that there are all these You know, strange people casting multiple ballots and you know, when you look at the number of votes cast in the state, the number of fraudulent ballots actually come in is so minuscule. It wouldn't have a nim packed on all but the Tiniest local elections. So we think it was a veil to, uh, you know, impose measures that would restrict voting by minorities, Black people, brown people and others in this state whose populations are growing and you know, many of them tend to, uh Democratic s O. You know, a couple of things that these girls would have done would have banned drive through voting and 24 hour voting, both of which proved to be very effective in the 2020 election. Especially in Mike Harris County on it enables people 25 voting, for example, enables people who worked in shifts 73 or whatever you can't get to the polls actually vote If you're not gonna test, you know, early ballots, you know, imposed new restrictions on absentee ballots voted, Uh, it gave A lot of new authority to partisan poll watchers to have people inside the polling station monitoring but you know Many of us were concerned that that would lead you know, actually be intimidating voters. And you know, we haven't had that before, and we're doing it now and then it would You know what one of the things back to the issue of you know this legislation racist you know they wanted to pass make the law says that you could only vote from 1 to 9 PM on Sundays..
KCRW
"six month long" Discussed on KCRW
"In the client's best interest. Let's make a plan dot org's right now it is 75 degrees in Santa Barbara at 4 35 from NPR News. This is all things considered. I'm Ari Shapiro in Washington, and I'm Elsa Chang in Los Angeles. The U. S. Is imposing new restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials. This comes as a six month long conflict in northern Ethiopia intensifies. Thousands have already died in the fighting there, and there are reports of possible war crimes committed by all sides as civilians and their homes and property are targeted by armed forces here with more on all of this is Michelle Gavin, a senior fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome Thanks for having me. So what exactly are these new restrictions the administration has put in place. So Secretary Blinken just announced Visa restriction policy so essentially a visa ban. A list of names will be drawn up or has already been drawn up. Of individuals responsible, you know, in the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments responsible for the crisis, and they will be denied entry to the U. S. As their immediate family members may also be denied entry. Okay, well, now the Biden administration. I mean, it's previously expressed concerns about this conflict. It has put pressure on Ethiopia's prime minister, Abby Achmed to defuse it. Why is the us taking this additional step now in particular? Because the statements and the diplomatic overtures thus far aren't working. The conflict persists. Day presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopian territory persists despite Prime Minister Abby's a commitment that the Eritrean troops would leave. And the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen S. Oh, there's a real concern about famine in Tigre and the issues of humanitarian access that the international canoes been working on for months remain unresolved. But ultimately do restrictions like this limiting visas and so forth. Do they actually get results? It's a mixed bag. These kinds of targeted sanctions in some cases have seemed to influence behavior, particularly if It's not just the United States but becomes a multilateral effort to isolate certain officials on make how help a government feel that kind of international pressure. In other cases, these sorts of restrictions have done very little. It was certainly in the case of Eritrea. They have weathered much tougher sanction receipt regimes for quite a long time. In the past Eritrea a Ethiopia may be more sensitive Tonto reputational risk Well, if these new restrictions don't work, what else can the biting administration do you think Well, you know, I think it's quite telling that in the statement announcing these secretary Blinken did call on other governments to join the U. S. So I would say that the immediate step would be to try and make this action more of a multi multilateral one to the degree possible. Then there's you know the issue of assistance so the U. S has already frozen some types of economic and security assistance to Ethiopia. But we could also use three U. S voice and vote at the international financial institutions to apply pressure so there, you know a range of steps that can be taken. Well in the 30 seconds or so that we have left. What do you see? Are the consequences if this fighting does not come to an end soon. Well, it's devastating for the entire region. In addition to the human tragedy of people living in famine conditions, people who have been the victim of these kinds of atrocities the Ethiopia is at risk of coming apart at the seams. Tigre is not the only conflict zone in the country. Thies. This crisis has already spilled over. There's a border conflict with Sudan. Obviously Eritrea's implicated it has implications for Somalia, so there's a strategically important part of the Horn of Africa that it depends on a stable Ethiopia. That is Michelle Gavin from the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you very much. Thank you. The U. S Supreme Court decision last year has changed law enforcement in the state of Oklahoma. That decision restored tribal authority to both police crimes and prosecute criminals. It's also lead to greater responsibility from a Scobie nation officers known as Light Horsemen. From member station K. O S U Allison Aditya reports on what that responsibility looks like on the ground. It's a Friday night and Miss coordination. Light Horse Police officer Amy Bennett is getting ready to go out on her shift. What problem? Don't be 97. Then it is sitting in her police car outside the river Spirit Casino near downtown.
90.3 KAZU
"six month long" Discussed on 90.3 KAZU
"And I'm Elsa Chang in Los Angeles. The U. S is imposing new restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials. This comes as a six month long conflict in northern Ethiopia intensifies. Thousands have already died in the fighting there, and there are reports of possible war crimes committed by all sides as civilians and their homes and property are targeted by armed forces here with more on all of this is Michelle Gavin, a senior fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome Thanks for having me. So what exactly are these new restrictions the administration has put in place. So Secretary Blinken just announced Visa restriction policy so essentially a visa ban. A list of names will be drawn up or has already been drawn up. Of individuals responsible, you know, in the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments responsible for the crisis, and they will be denied entry to the U. S. As their immediate family members may also be denied entry. Okay, well, now the Biden administration. I mean, it's previously expressed concerns about this conflict. It has put pressure on Ethiopia's prime minister, Abby Achmed to defuse it. Why is the us taking this additional step now in particular? Because the statements and the diplomatic overtures thus far aren't working. The conflict persists. The presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopian territory persists despite Prime Minister Abby's a commitment that the Eritrean troops would leave and the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. S so there's a real concern about famine in Tigre and the issues of humanitarian access that the international canoes been working on for months remain unresolved. But ultimately do restrictions like this limiting visas and so forth. Do they actually get results? It's a mixed bag. These kinds of targeted sanctions in some cases have seemed to influence behavior, particularly if It's not just the United States but becomes a multilateral effort to isolate certain officials on make how help a government feel that kind of international pressure. In other cases, these sorts of restrictions have done very little. It was certainly in the case of Eritrea. They have weathered much tougher sanction Rizzi regimes for quite a long time. In the past Eritrea a Ethiopia may be more sensitive Tonto reputational risk Well, if these new restrictions don't work, what else can the Biden administration do you think Well, you know, I think it's quite telling that in the statement announcing these secretary Blinken did call on other governments to join the U. S. So I would say that the immediate step would be to try and make this action more of a multi multilateral one to the degree possible. Then there's the issue of assistance. So the U. S has already frozen some types of economic and security assistance to Ethiopia. But we could also use three U. S voice and vote at the international financial institutions to apply pressure so there, you know a range of steps that can be taken. Well in the 30 seconds or so that we have left. What do you see? Are the consequences if this fighting does not come to an end soon? Well, it's devastating for the entire region. In addition to the human tragedy of people living in famine conditions, people who have been the victim of these kinds of atrocities the Ethiopia is at risk of coming apart at the seams. Tigre is not the only conflict zone in the country. On these. This crisis has already spilled over. There's a border conflict with Sudan. Obviously Eritrea's implicated it has implications for Somalia, so there's a strategically important part of the Horn of Africa that it depends on a stable Ethiopia. That is Michelle Gavin from the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you very much. Thank you. The U. S Supreme Court decision last year has changed law enforcement in the state of Oklahoma. That decision restored tribal authority to both police crimes and prosecute criminals. It's also lead to greater responsibility from a Scobie nation officers known as Light Horsemen. From member station K. O S U Allison Aditya reports on what that responsibility looks like on the ground. It's a Friday night and Miss coordination. Light Horse Police officer Amy Bennett is getting ready to go out on her shift. Want five? I'll be 97. Then it is sitting in her police car outside the river Spirit Casino near downtown Tulsa. Well, we already have a call. So we're gonna head that way. What's our call.
Reefer MEDness
"six month long" Discussed on Reefer MEDness
"Group of patients were largely affected by by chronic pain than mental health conditions. You introduce medical cannabis course of care. And then you get an associated reductions use prescription drugs including prescription opioids and statistically significant improvements. In wadi lay so really exciting that To see this finding and certainly supportive of what patients have been sharing with us off for so long but nice to have a significant data. Set point to those outcomes world Having adding numbers to tobacco what patients and clinicians have been saying for years is is fantastic. The leap this was a great chat. I really enjoyed it. And i know our listeners are really good. Enjoy this Interview as well. Thank you very much for your time travel. Thank you very much for the interest and thanks to your yours as well. We mother Really exciting findings just coming out over the next few weeks so really. We have a chance investigating day driver. So two trevor. So that's this is your second episode on your pity and you said you might have. Maybe there is there. There are some guidelines canadian guidelines. That are coming out now. They're talking about how you could get somebody off of patient off or reduce their opioids with cabinet weights. So i'm chiming with a gentleman about that one's a hopefully that turns into but let's talk about felipe so the question i posed just before we went into the interview. So do you remember what sleep said. So what happens if we just take somebody off of opioid and put them on a cabinet or no eight aren't trading addiction for another. You remember his answer. I'll let you go for it. So he said that. Of course they looked at that and a big part of their studies. They found what they put somebody on medicinal cannabis at x. Level what you don't want to see is the amount of cannabis they use sort increase and increase over time. Because you know that might be the beginning of of an addiction problem or whatever that's not what they saw it was relatively flat and sometimes even flat slash going down so putting somebody onto cannabinoid. Didn't seem to be putting them on something that they wanted more and more now again. It was only six months. And there's going to be but is just you know at least over the six months. It wasn't like we started up here and there does just took all right. They didn't they did substitute one of the one of the problems with with with. Opiates is that you get the pain from the drug. So if you know. If i'm on opioids chronically and i'm taking it every day eventually creeping you creeping creeping you creeping and with cannabis the thought is well people get tolerance so much of it. I'm not getting high well. Yeah but they didn't see that young thing about candidates is at once. The acute nature of the pain is done. And you should be weaning yourself off the tylenol. Threes or whatever is using the also can take a break from candidates and we learned from sue. When she takes a break from cannabis and for lyme's disease a week or two weeks breaks comes back and you can use less cannabis than get a response. So they found. They found that way that doesn't happen. She founded anecdotally. She found taking a break. Help use less candidates so could be also the individual but and obviously it's more to learn. Their study was only six months long but still still get just. I know i said a bunch of the beginning of worth repeating. This was big. There was lots of people in lots of places. Did so you know cannabis studies. They're just you know twenty twenty stolen vancouver. Who you know. They looked at no cross canada over over fourteen hundred patients. This was a big prospective. Study so this is. This is really good for add to the evidence other. Another thing that i think can happen with this study is governments can look at it because governments right now are also i mean. The pharma care is far medicare in manitoba in manitoba. It's called farm. The government helps pay for your medication. So people that are on chronic chronic. Analgesics are those pills covered in pharma. Cats yeah okay. So one thing. This study told taught us. Is that people that substitute or use cannabis in conjunction. With their opioids is that their costs have gone down. Yes so government so governments again. Governments could save money by putting cannabis into pharmacies family doctors and pharmacists to augment. Its use with pain if there was coverage but yeah and maybe another episode for another day but yet that is a current issue with With patients you know. Let's say i was on two hundred dollars a month worth of morphine. But you know. It's paid for by by provincial program. Even if you only take one hundred dollars worth of cannabis a month to have the same effect from pockets point of view. I go from paying nothing to pay one hundred dollars a month so not having not having any sort of coverage on medicinal cannabis. I don't think is good for you. I don't think so. I mean i very fortunate. I do not have any family. Doctor prescribed medication. So the times that i have come to your pharmacy and i submit my prescription and you tell me there's no fee and what do you mean. There's no fee that must be the must be pharma care covering no you know you you wouldn't ever go. You don't k so in manitoba you don't buy your house you don't mind after and a lot of the provincial programs like this so this deductible so you know in manitoba starts april first you start buying your drugs and if you so let's say you're deductibles thousand dollars for a year you buy drugs until you get two thousand dollars and then after a thousand dollars. The mental health pays for your medications until the next march thirty first and they start paying again. Different provinces have different systems. But that's kind of sort of how Most provincial systems work and insurance companies were kind of sort of some some of the work on deductible system too but yeah if if you spend the majority of your year not paying for your you know your opioid prescriptions. And even if you find that the canvas ones were better or safer or whatever. It's going to be hard pressed for you to say. But i don't want the government to be. I'd rather pay out of pocket completely because you know candidates isn't doesn't go through the same system but anyway okay baby. There's potential and it was nice though. That till ray study did show on a grand scale. The government could actually look at this and go you know. We used to spend x. Amount on prescription drugs if we instead paid for the cannabis. We might actually save money. And i think that's a good. I think that's a good thing about. I haven't i haven't read the study but does it talk about any biases in the study. Because you are correct. He is vice president of medical cannabis shop so how did he get around the biases component. So some of the strengths. It you know. They got samples from twenty one different medical clinics across five canadian provinces. It might not be representative of the whole canada. But i don't think that's terrible as many of the clinics specialize in treating chronic pain. You know they might have full over represented pain patients in in their group.
Data Engineering Podcast
"six month long" Discussed on Data Engineering Podcast
"And then once you're done with a job you forget about the fact that you've created a clone of the data that now flies around. Maybe it has some super-sensitive. Pi information that you definitely don't want to have floating around and the universe and that's just the reality and a lot of companies because what's interesting years that all else being equal. There's is interesting tradeoff between security data governance on the one side sides innovation. Like how quickly are able to move. And depending on the organization like some people are extremely stringent with what they're doing and nobody gets access to any data whatsoever unless they go through six months long approval processes a result of that. They're not innovating quickly. They're not building new products whatsoever on the other side. You've got the companies who are going really really fast and their culture is one of a lot of trust and whatnot. But they're running risk that at some point there maybe a misuse and abuse of data or big data. Whatever it is and there isn't the one right answer for all the different companies but it is to me of early fascinating trade off to think through a very fascinating problem to observe when we talked to companies in the world that are trying to solve their data problems and of course like one way of getting closer to a solution here is that you do use these platforms these tooling in the data op space. Which helps you to automate your common data related work around creating data pie blinds. Managing your data assets whatnot wear securities actually built in where lineages build where. It's extremely clear who talk about machinery early. Quick created a certain feature for what type of use case for. What type of model is running in production. What's the actual purpose of it. Does that data scientists and the model as a result of that should have access to a certain type of critical information because maybe for instance what oftentimes seen certain data is completely legally allowed to be used for fraud use cases but it does not for marketing use cases and you can build constraints like this into a central platform that standardizes and that automates the workflows off the internal users in your organization. I agree with everything that kevin said. There's indeed attention between making data available to everyone so they can run quickly and innovate and it controls and safe. One of the challenges of implementing any sort of strategy around security. Is that a lot of the different parts of the stack have pretty granular security controls..
Jay Anxious Podcast
"six month long" Discussed on Jay Anxious Podcast
"Our last weekend home a note next weekend last weekend and then it just kept going on and on and on until politically. They figured out. You know. we can't go to turkey and then So anyway we get our stuff we get to kuwait and then we The scud missiles came in so and then that was my first experiences in kuwait the scud missiles got launched the chemical weapons alarm goes off. I mean it was a false but still we put on our mop suit and with our gas masks and stupid hot and it's like am i going to die because i'm hot or because the chemicals going to get me so you know like like which one is this. I'm sucking my canteen dry. Like i'm so thirsty in this thing so that happened three times while we were in kuwait. I'm like let's go like we got you know so. Finally we get the word head to head into iraq. Get on get on our way. And we get up to Saddam international airport where we stayed for a few days to run operations with the aircraft out. had a few kind of interesting moments there. We stayed in the baggage claim area With our cots and stuff. I took my first shower. Their meaning At on the flight line where there is a drain we had a. We pulled these cubicle from from an office recited. Cubicle pulled it out there to put patch on the four side and we had a leader and a half bottle water. And then. That's what i used as the take a shower to get get somewhat clean and so that was interesting. There was one car in the parking garage at the airport. By the way it was chevy. Cavalier king yeah can't make that up like it was one of the weirdest things you know in the parking garage. So it's like a normal airport and here's his one car and it's an american made car like gosh. That's crazy joe. Yeah so get up to camp speicher which is up near to create will where it's an airfield. It's an abandoned airfield really from the iraqi air force and we're going to set up operations there and so i'll tell you i didn't know we're going to be offered year. Had no idea. I mean we at that point deployments. Were six months long. So we're thinking maybe six months whatever and the gets camp spiker and of course it's named after Scott speicher the air force pilot shot down and we'd never found him so it was named after him..
Unapologetically BOLD: I'm not sorry for....
"six month long" Discussed on Unapologetically BOLD: I'm not sorry for....
"And yeah the risks an issue but their low backs convenience you too and it was this moment of like. Can i have my life like this sucks. Like i cannot believe that i'm working in this apartment and i like went home and cried and i felt very stock ag- i felt very stuck and My husband and i of felt like. Is this going to be my life like. Did i really get my like my doctorate to do this. And the talked. My boss is being vase because just being him. But am i gonna like be stocked my whole life and it took my husband saying like no you. Why don't you just think about what you do. You create your own thing though that be like and it took me a little bit. You know took me months. Like i think i need to do that like i needed you something because whatever doing right now is just not working you crying every day and you feeling like i'm going crazy isn't isn't working and so what i did was i just i put in my two weeks notice Right before i went online honeymoon or got married when on my honeymoon and that well received but you know again it's like this is my life. I need to go and do what i need to do. And over honeymoon. My husband. And i figured out what i do for my work and here we are sound like six-month-long like oh mg this is my life. Like what am i doing. And i can't cry. I don't wanna keep crying like this every day and important that you noticed that because i have whenever i started my own business. Somebody's like oh. This is scary. I don't know how you how you do that. But i need my health at the time was i'm a people pleaser like i'm trying to recover from it still suck at it But it was just the fact that i continually just with so much stress and wanting to perform then i felt held back and i couldn't do. It was just so much stepped out in what they demand is like scary. They knew they hated their job. They'd rather stay in that comfort that they had perceived happy bubble even though they were stuck then moving four. So that's my next question for you..
KLIF 570 AM
"six month long" Discussed on KLIF 570 AM
"Back to the Michael Knowles Show. I am Michael Knowles and I have a shocking Groundbreaking bit of wisdom for you. The left really doesn't like us. Now. This This doesn't seem like a ground breaking insight here, but it's actually something that conservatives Think still haven't made their peace with there are still many conservatives like like, for instance, those loser squishy Republicans who voted to convict at the forest impeachment trial. But many other people who maybe aren't quite as bad as they are. But who believe that, you know the left. They just hate Trump's tweets. If he weren't so mean they'd be they'd like us more if we just Owner rhetoric in a certain way. If we disavow certain Republicans, then we can come together. We'll meet in the middle. There is no them. There is no middle right now. You know, this, I think is why Joe Biden is so confused is Joe Biden was always moderate Democrat. That's how he styled himself because it was for his political interest to style himself a moderate Democrat. That no longer works, so he's embracing the radical left of the Democratic Party. When you've got, say moderate Democrat and Republicans, you can kind of meat in the middle. Why? Well, you're going to disagree on abortion. Right. That's abortions have kind of a binary issue, right either. You think we ought to kill babies in the womb or or not kill babies in the womb, but You know there, There's gonna be some compromise where abortion. Maybe it'll be legal until a certain date or under certain circumstances. I don't want there to be compromised. But at least it is possible to compromise in that regard on immigration. Well, you'll let this many people in. But not this many people in you compromise me like that tax rates. Well, it's not gonna be quite as high as the Democrats wanted. Ubiquitous, Lowest Republicans want We'll meet in the middle somewhere. Foreign trade, right? Whatever you go down on the list. You can do that, with moderate Democrats who agree. At the very least, this is a good country. We support our country. You can't do that with radical Democrats. Who support political violence and embrace it. It's funny that the left accuses Trump of supporting political violence and he doesn't do that ready, explicitly said Be peaceful. Don't be violent, always be peaceful, whereas the left does explicitly endorse political violence as I feel the Trump legal team showed quite well during during their video presentation at the impeachment trial. You can't compromise between one political party, the Republicans who support the country and one political party. It doesn't support the country that calls for half the country to be utterly excised and ostracized. Because what's what is the compromise between have a country don't have a country where you how do you meet in the middle? You have when you have Ah, City state. I don't know. What do you have You meet in the middle. And you have Ah, An NGO. I don't What do you wear? And you can't. You can't compromise between those things. One side is gonna win, either we have a country. With borders and loyalty to our fellow citizens and some shared sense of purpose. We don't wait. Don't have borders. We don't have a common language. We don't have any shared sense of purpose. We hate our history. And if you hate your history, guess what? You're gonna hate your future, too. It's not just about trump the left. Feels this way about all of us check. Ugur was very prominent Left wing commentator. He runs the young Turks. He just showed this today He tweeted out something I thought was incredibly stupid and revealing. True of much of jinx commentary, he said. Quote. There are many things Trump got right about right wing vote. They don't care about policy. They're driven mainly by fear and hatred of others. They're greedy, incredibly selfish and driven mad by envy, And lastly, they prefer violence to democracy. If democracy means equality. My obviously this is not true. The charges were not true Republicans Carol about a lot of policies. We want to make abortion illegal. We wanna have stable families. We want to be able to keep more of our property. We want to close up our borders and I have a functioning nation. We want to keep national sovereignty away from trans national institutions. Were there a lot of things. I mean, we could go down the list. Right? So those are policies on that is just flat out wrong there. What's he says that we're selfish. We're selfish and that we're human. All humans are selfish to a degree, but In fact, conservatives proposal politics ordered toward higher goods. Right, generally speaking. Maybe the libertarians a little bit less so, but the conservatives generally Supported politics ordered toward a higher good a transcendent moral order. That may be limits some of my appetites and desires, but ultimately, it's for a higher good conservatives are not particularly envious, right On the contrary. But it Winston Churchill called Socialism, he said, was the gospel of envy. Conservatives say We ought to be able to keep the things that our arms the left is saying we want. What is yours? Give me what is yours? I deserve that which you already have. Conservatives violent well, they could be violent, I suppose, but much less violent than the left. Compare the three hour Madness of the capital riot compared to the six month long BLM and anti for riots even longer than that. And moreover, on this equality question conservatives embrace a far deeper and more some substantive vision of equality than liberals. The left right now is is created a new cast system whereby people have greater or lesser value based on their race based on their sex based on their sexual desires. Based on various claims of grievance, conservatives don't say that we say no. We have a sort of spiritually equality and a political equality is citizens, And that's that. We obviously you're different. Physically, we look different. Some people taller, shorter, but we do have this kind of Spiritually and political equality. The left basically denies the spiritually quality. Through the various ideologies that they entertain, which are overwhelmingly materialist or or even worse, But more than this tweet being wrong. It's extremely stupid. Just imagine dedicating your career to political commentary and this is the best you can muster. Right wing is bad. Trump got where they're bad. They're evil. They're terrible. I really would hope for better from our left wing commentators. That's why I began the show talking about Jonathan shaped who I don't really like, but occasionally says something that's at least Interesting, at least unexpected. I don't think that the left is uniformly driven by fear and hatred, and they don't care about policy and they're reading and all that. Sure. I mean that that stuff exists. I think that the left is motivated by ideas. I do want to take those ideas. Seriously. The left broadly right now. I think it doesn't want to take any of this seriously. They just want to write off half the country is a great supporter of democracy. I think it's important that we hear from lots of other voices.
600 WREC
"six month long" Discussed on 600 WREC
"Loss of businesses and loss of jobs, not to mention some natural disasters thrown in there. And, of course, all of this centering around the covert situation in the lockdowns and the pandemic joining us now. Chip Merlin, who is an attorney specializing in insurance claims in disputes to talk about how businesses and all of us individually and personally came maneuver and protect our homes and our businesses and our lifes. Uh, through all this craziness, chip? Welcome. And thanks for being here. Hey, Jakey. Great to be with you this morning. You know, I think there probably were tunnel lawsuits filed through all of this toe, You know, bring back some coverage and help pay for things that were lost in all of this, But a lot of these have been dismissed. Why? Why is that? Well, the man and the majority of them have but not all. But you know, the first part is over. 50% of the policies haven't exclusion for viruses. Which the cove it is. I mean, and judges reading the insurance contracts right up front. Sorry you don't have it. The second biggest problem is that many judges have felt in there opinions that the virus can be cleaned up. You call you have do is wipe it up, you know, and therefore there's not a lot of what's known as physical damage. It's not like The tornado went through, and there's gonna be a six month long construction project and as a result of that there's been some very, very bad opinions have been few favorable ones, and there's a lot of appeals going on right now. You know, there's always that fine print in those insurance policies. I mean, sometimes you think you're covered for water damage or storm damage, And you look in the fine for all Wait. That's not included. What do you mean? It's not included. So how do you guide people through? Possibly redoing their policies. Re looking at their policies to cover things like that, that we don't see coming down the pike. I mean, insurance companies are in this for the money. Well, they cooperating. Allow that type of thing moving forward. A J T great question. Nobody reads their insurance policy. I mean, nobody when you get it. Even if you tried to read it, you wouldn't understand many of the words in it. And as a result of that the most important person in any equation of insurance is getting the right insurance agent and I tell people all the time, especially business people for having sake, you know, find not your best friend. Or somebody you played golf with. There's something like that..