40 Burst results for "Thursday"
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 18:00 10-04-2023 18:00
"When professional soccer player Marcus Rashford injured his shoulder, he turned to Resil's virtual reality sports training program. Resil's technology has helped him and athletes of all levels maintain their skills while recovering from injuries so that they can return to the field with confidence. Rashford says, after my shoulder injury, Resil VR was key to my training and helped me get back to the game. These are the ways athletes are using the Metaverse today. Learn more at meta .com slash metaverse impact. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Asia for this Thursday, October 5th in Hong Kong, Wednesday, October 4th in New York. And coming up today, fresh data on the US labor market shows cooling. Barclays cuts 50 of its senior investment bankers as firm -wide job cuts begin. And opening statements kick off the trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman -Fried. Biden pushes for Congress to start working on Ukraine aid. Scalise and Jordan in speaker pool. Trump leaves court. Attorney General calls his comments racist and dangerous. I'm Ed Baxter with Global News. Newcastle dominates PSG in a Champions League group stage match. I'm Dan Schwartzman. I'll have that story and more coming up in Bloomberg Sports. That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia. On Bloomberg 1130 New York. Bloomberg 99 .1 Washington D .C. Bloomberg 106 .1 Boston. Bloomberg 960 San Francisco. Sirius XM 119. And around the world on BloombergRadio .com and via the Bloomberg Business Act. Hi everybody. Good morning from Hong Kong on this Thursday. I'm Brian Curtis.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "Thursday" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Donate the Salvation Army National Capital Area Command to ensure that all kids can be successful. Visit SalvationArmyNCa .org. Bob Inlet, WTLP, Traffic. 7 News First Alert Chief Meteorologist Veronica Johnson Delightful weather continues. Really warm. Get ready for some major changes though as we head through the upcoming weekend tracking a very strong fall cold front. This evening your temperatures will drop from the 70s and into the 60s and 50s by early morning. We'll be looking at mainly clear skies with some patchy fog for early Thursday morning between 75 and 80 degrees Thursday afternoon with partly sunny skies. I'm 7 News Chief Meteorologist Veronica Johnson in the First Alert Weather Center. College Park 68, Fairfax City 67, the National Mall 68 degrees. Some parts of our area could be down to the middle and upper 50s overnight. Monday News at 10 and 40 past the hour brought to you by PenFed. Great rates for everyone and let's check in with Jeff Claybaugh. Ford's US
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1278. Gensler LOST AGAIN! | Judge Shreds SEC Appeal! | XRP Update
"Let's get into some XRP news today and talk about the SEC taking another black eye. These guys are taking round after round from the judge, and it's going to be an interesting one for sure. You don't want to miss this show. All right, my name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Let's get into it. A couple of topics that we'll break down from the judge, but also the kind of impact this could have for the overall crypto markets, even the Coinbase case. We'll give you guys kind of a rundown. One thing I do want to do is thank our sponsor, and that's iTrust Capital. If you guys are looking at going into long -term investing into crypto IRAs, this is one of the vehicles you can use, and it's very simple to do it. Easy to start up, there's no monthly fees, and all you have to do is you can do your own self -directed trading. So if you want to get into XRP or others, you can do that right here within the iTrust Capital IRA. Very easy to join, and you'd be joining 200 another ,000 accounts that have already created IRAs there with iTrust. So check the link down below. You get a $100 funding reward if you decide to do something there. Helps our channel out. Appreciate that. All right, so let's get into a couple things here. I want to go over to the PDF here. This is the judge response, and there's a few points. I'm going to kind of zoom in on this a little bit for you guys. There's a few spots in here. There's going to be a lot of scrolling, but the point is we're going to get to a couple of points here. I want to go down here to page five. All right, so let's get into this. First, SEC has not presented a pure question of law. This is one of the things that the judge has already pretty much put in in the judgment on the first ruling, and of course, kind of them just saying, hey, this is, you're still in the same position here. In fact, the court specifically rejected defendants' essential ingredients, the legal test, and applied the SEC's legal standards. So this was where the SEC was essentially trying to create their own rules. Judge says, nope, not going to work here. Further into the document, the SEC seeks to appeal question C, and issuers offers and sales of crypto assets and trading platforms create a reasonable expectation of profits based on the efforts of others. But the court did not hold that offers and sales on a digital asset exchange can create a reasonable expectation of profits based on the efforts of others. So I think that is pretty much the same kind of scenario that's playing out in the Coinbase trial that we will most likely, I think we're going to see a win there as well. Ripple's programmatic sales were blind, bid -asked transactions, same as almost every crypto transaction out there. Ripple's programmatic sales represented less than 1 % of the global XRP trading volume, did not make any promises or offers, and the SEC failed to provide evidence. The SEC failed to provide evidence, and she just keeps on, failed to provide evidence over and over on all of this. So really kind of hitting home on the SEC, just not holding up their end of being able to even prove that XRP or other digital assets are securities. Further in this document, it says the SEC failed to provide evidence and the development of use cases for the XRP ledger, which constitutes a tangible and definable consideration to Ripple. That's important. Court also rejected the SEC's argument that XRP provided Ripple employees as compensation and bonuses satisfies the Howie's first prong. So getting into a lot more detail here, and I think this is going to flow into the rest of the civil cases that are still out there against Garlinghouse and Larson. All right, so court rejects the SEC's remaining argument that the courts have accordingly found section five violations where unregistered crypto asset transactions occur not between the issuer and the investor, but through intermediaries, including on trading platforms, keyword on trading platforms. That is Coinbase in a nutshell. And I think that's the scenario. Digital assets I think are getting ready to fall outside of the guise of the SEC. Court rejects the argument that there is a substantial ground for difference of opinion, meaning it doesn't matter what you think the court has a rule of law to go by and we're going to affect it. And, uh, the SEC is not creating their own law, which is the other scenario. Okay, so further in the court, uh, in the document, the court cannot draw any conclusions about library's core reasoning, uh, to an issue because it was never litigated. Therefore the SEC fails to point to any digital asset cases which conflict with the court's holding as to the other distributions. If you don't know about what happened in the library case, this was a really a milestone event for the SEC, but now the court is pretty much saying, man, not really. Listen into this clip right here. After the blockchain was launched and we didn't do an ICO and this was during the ICO boom and then we said we were trying to be a conservative company and eventually the SEC sued us and they declined to actually bring the trial until shortly before the statute of limitations was going to hit on our, on our first buying time. Yeah. We came in and we did a whole presentation and they just used that stuff against us. Never answered a single one of our questions. We've said we'll destroy the entire company. We'll give you our entire pre -mon. You can have every dollar in our bank accounts, right? But what we want is the status that Bitcoin has, right? If I have to blow everything up, if that's what's somehow the difference here. Okay, fine. Just tell me that that's what I have to do. They won't tell you that. They'll say you're, I mean, seriously, it's so it like gives me an energy. That's crazy. I mean, that would be in the founder of library talking about how much pressure and just gravitas that the sec is wielding out there on small companies. And that's the problem of overreach that we talk about all the time. All right, so let's go back to, actually there's another clip I want to play for you. This is John Deaton. Listen to this one. The judge agreed with me, promised me, assured me that he was going to make sure that the world knew that his decision did not apply to secondary market transactions. And that was a very important point because judge Torres in the ripple case cites that hearing Jeremy Kaufman and library spend between one and $4 million and they spend another couple million dollars in legal fees. The sec spends ungodly amount of hours taxpayer money. And when it's all said and done, the government protected us by getting $111 ,000 in legal fees. From library. Well, we've successfully destroyed them financially. We did what we told Jeremy Kaufman we were going to do when he argued with us and we said, we will bankrupt you pal. What happened is the library is appealing the decision by the judge granting summary judgment to the sec. I think that they have been emboldened, if you will, because of the grayscale ruling by the ripple decision by maybe even the Uniswap decision by judge failure and hopefully a really good decision that comes down in the Coinbase motion to, to dismiss. Remember people, there's not a case in 80 years that supports taking an asset that may have been an investment contract in the beginning and then calling it an investment contract. The underlying asset forever. None. Yeah. So Deaton pretty, pretty benefit. I'm pretty passionate about that. And I think he does kind of hit that point home is that the sec kind of plays unfairly, not surprising and to anyone out there. But the good thing is, is now the courts are starting to rule against them. And this seems like they are finally in a position where they're taking the bully to class here further in the conclusion denied at the sec's request for a stay is also denied. So this court basically just lashed everything down. This is an interesting statement at the end prior to the final pretrial conference council for both parties along with parties themselves shall meet in person for at least one hour to discuss the settlement of the match. So they are really meaning the court is really pushing to get this done. This of course is Annalisa Torres, judge Annalisa Torres, which I think is the one that has pretty much outlined that the sec has no case here for digital asset control and most likely is going to fall under, under outside the graces of the court when it comes to the, to the Coinbase, uh, case as well. All right. Just a couple of tweets here. Uh, corrupt sec got an effort fail on their appeal. Judge Torres wrote the fail 10 times. Uh, here's Stuart Alderati, of course, the ripple attorney courts, um, July 13 ruling was and remains law of the land XRP is not a security. Jeremy Hogan comes in and says, Hey, okay, look here. A couple of things here that I want to note. Uh, and that is really this statement right here. This is a disaster for the agency. I'm going to mark that just it's there. This is a disaster for the agency, but I think this is, this is a good thing for crypto in general and digital assets. But more importantly, I think for digital asset technology and how all of this is moving forward, keeping government overreach out of industry and innovation is important because as you know, Deaton kind of mentioned, they went through all that, you know, millions and millions and millions of taxpayers money for $111 ,000 for a library case, which is probably going to get overturned out. So not a good one. Here was Scott, Scott Chamberlain, uh, further talking about the XRP case and he kind of hits something here. So there's a lot in change. SCC failed to prove its case. Now it has to push not something nice uphill with a pointy stick if it wants to win. So they have a huge boulder in front of them to get this done in being able to win. I think the SCC has lost this and I think it's going to start either looking very bad for Gensler or the SCC is going to start to pivot their position. Now you look at it politically, that could be the case because we're starting to see some things in DC that could also kind of tie into this. I want to go over to this last clip, which is Deaton talking about this a little bit further into what this might mean. Listen in. She said some XRP holders, no doubt bought XRP for speculative reasons and they may have relied on the efforts of Ripple, but the SCC didn't prove that. Programmatic sales of XRP on exchanges are not securities. XRP itself is not a security. And what she did in this decision was solidify it. And I'm telling you it's untouchable. It cannot be touched. She even said, look, I never said that it's impossible for some crypto token to still be a security when it's bought on an exchange. I've just said that XRP in this case with these facts are not period. She even made it more clear that as of right now on this day, excluding Bitcoin, XRP is the only one clearly, with legal clarity. I'm really hoping that judge failure comes through on the Coinbase decision because I think that will be when Gensler is forced to pivot. And that's when Elizabeth Warren has to accept that her anti crypto army is a bunch of old people about to die. All right, there you go. Anti crypto army dead. Uh, and I think back to my point is that I think that Gensler is going to pivot. He has to, this is starting to impede political positioning. It's also impeding the benefits of what the SCC is going to try to do in really the work they should be doing, which is real securities law. And that is the challenge because right now it's just overreached. This is just power grabs. You look at what Graywall was saying here. Of course, this is the Coinbase attorney. SCC just filed its opposition motion to dismiss their case. This is the opposition to the motion for Coinbase trying to get this dismissed. This is going to take on a light of its own. If you look back down here at the end, it says, we look forward to filing our reply in October 24th. So as always, we appreciate court's consideration. So this is probably going to move into November, but the key here is the SCC continues to lose and they're losing in very, very grandiose ways. And this is not good for anything from a governmental overreach standpoint. I think it's even worse for the political position of the SCC. And this also starts to change things dramatically, I think in digital assets as a whole. Most likely Coinbase is going to come out of this. Coinbase is going to look really good pretty soon. So, all right guys, we're going to get into that more. We're going to be covering more of this. Obviously we had the speaker house change up this week. There's a big implication there on crypto and digital assets as a whole. We'll cover that. Make sure and stick around on the channel. If you're not subscribed, make sure and subscribe right now. Just hit that little button down there. If you want to get some of our live streams, I'm doing as much lately, but we do want to bring those back. Just hit that bell. You'll get notifications when we do this. All right, if you're not in our diamond circle, get in now. It's another place where we drop additional content. We've got a really special surprise for you. We've got new TA videos coming only to our diamond circle members twice a week. Those will be dropped on, it looks like Monday and Thursday. Plus you're going to get Kyle's webinar, excuse me, web3 podcast, and he's adding another show to it. So you're going to get four new pieces of content that you don't get anywhere else. Not here on YouTube, only in the diamond circle. Click the link down below. You guys want to catch me? It's out there on Twitter at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path.
News, Traffic and Weather
Fresh update on "thursday" discussed on News, Traffic and Weather
"Services hi there everybody here comes a beautiful full thursday we've got to find our way through some morning fog first it will be a murky morning commute out there especially in the south sound with really low visibility around parts of mason and durston counties in particular eventually though bright blue skies nice pumpkin patch day with mid 60s 70s by friday and saturday in the couple four weather center meteorologist i'm shannon o'donnell clear skies right now 59 in downtown seattle public safety he is the top priority according to a survey of pierce county residents so the executive wants to increase the more from northwest news radio's ryan harris when pierce county executive bruce dammeier presented his budget to the county council he made it clear they have to spend wisely as the economy puts added cost pressures onto everyone but he also acknowledged residents call for improved public safety they are fearful for their community and in some cases they're fearful for their own safety the plan calls for small reductions in the number of deputies and corrections officers while increasing the sheriff's office budget by twelve percent or thirty nine million dollars dammeier acknowledged the challenges in recruiting law enforcement officers but he says the focus will be on filling vacant positions the incentives and the training and the things that we have done in the past have yielded results we are seeing an uptick in our staffing dammeier says public safety also includes holding criminals accountable so his plan includes more money for the courts and prosecutors office for our takoma news bureau ryan harris northwest news radio dramatic changes today in the way seattle treats tourism marketing and making money from visitors mayor bruce herald changed a law that previously prevented the emerald city from directly marketing business we are positioning ourselves to attract tourists year -round to host their conventions stay at our hotels support our local businesses enjoy everything that our wonderful city has to offer there changes are to a hotel tax that will bring in millions of dollars in the brand new two billion dollar seattle convention center is open for business a similar city like san francisco brings in close to two billion dollars a year from elections a proposed addition to king county sales tax would be earmarked to expand arts and cultural offerings around the county with a focus on equity the one -tenth of one percent tax of the for the doors program is expected to raise nearly 777 million dollars over seven years it would be managed by the county's for culture agency where director brian carter says it will benefit visitors and residents research overwhelmingly shows the positive social impacts that arts and culture and science technology have on greater civic engagement and social cohesion so that it's so vitally important at this particular moment the county council is working on the measure with a final vote expected in mid december governor insley wants the state to invest much more into affordable housing northwest news chef radio pojola as details from our takoma bureau this morning insley spoke at the annual conference of housing washington a public private group that works to get people off the streets in the fight to end the governor pointed previous successes in the last session of legislature washington state took the biggest step to to build more housing in the history of the state of washington one billion dollars of investment to move forward to build more housing but insley says that's not enough adding that he wanted an investment of four billion dollars however he says the state is making progress at getting people into housing in takoma pojolan northwest news radio there's word of another large layoff in seattle's tech sector cloud software company trick says it will cut nearly 800 jobs the company says the move follows a deep review of operations and they're back those popular tours of boeing's assembly plant are just hours away from making a return northwest news the fascination with air and space travel isn't just a puget sound thing really popular we have visitors from all over the world boeing has been giving public tours since the first seven forty seven built in nineteen sixty eight and after a three -year pandemic induced hiatus the future of flight is back boeing's norma from our balcony one can see what's called the triple seven u line which is the assembly process so there will be active tour groups are coming through the triple seven is the world's largest twin jet with a range of more than eight thousand miles and evert is popular again we have received already a large amount of inquiries you know we're excited again just to have that opportunity to bring visitors back the first tour is set for first a warning john liberty northwest newsradio we check the beacon plumbing sports test got 10 and 40 minutes past the hour in seattle's lumen field sounder soccer against the la galaxy that is about to get underway any minute
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Stanley Druckenmiller: Bitcoin is BETTER than Gold | EP 838
"Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin Live, streaming from Los Angeles. California because we're getting ready from Pacific Bitcoin. If all goes well, in today's setup we'll be live streaming from the floor of Pacific Bitcoin Thursday and Friday, which should be a whole lot of fun. Some special episodes. Dell and Opti are gonna be holding it down. I think our boy Chris Alamo from from from Bitcoin magazine should join us as well. There should be some interesting shows and then Opti is gonna be doing some some interviews with some high -profile Bitcoiners, so that should be a lot of fun. Really, really excited for the Pacific Bitcoin Festival. It's one of my favorite conferences honestly that I've been to. I know Opti had a lot of fun to say the least last year. Sophie. It was an amazing time. I'm gonna be honest, it's gonna be hard to beat this year, but knowing the Swan team, they're gonna kill it. A hundred percent, yeah. So they've been prepping for this for a long for for for a long time, so should be should be a lot of fun. Anyways, today guys we're gonna talk about the infamous debate, Bitcoin versus gold. And you know this this famous billionaire, apparently he is one of the most famous and most successful hedge fund managers on Wall Street. 6 .2 billion dollar net worth. He said the quiet part out loud. He said, you know, he believes that if the gold bet is right, the Bitcoin bet is right. But I would I think that there's more to that, right? Because the physical characteristics of gold, like I think gold bugs were were right in their arguments. I just think that they had the wrong tool, right? And I think Bitcoin solves this because of its ability to, its ability for a human being to take self -custody of large quantities of Bitcoin by just writing down, you know, 12 to 24 words. And not only taking self -custody of it, but being able to send it across the world, you know, instantaneously for pennies on the dollar, right? So that completely changes, you know, the whole dynamics of this. And I think because of its ease of, its ability for people to take self -custody because it's an open ledger, I think it's going to be a lot harder for them to rehypothecate it the way they did with gold. And then a lot of people say because they did that with gold, they were able to control the gold markets. They were able to put downward pressure on the price of gold.
Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
Fresh update on "thursday" discussed on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
"Drives them. Watch The Circuit Thursday nights from Bloomberg Originals. You can catch it at 10 p .m. Eastern on Bloomberg TV and on the Bloomberg app and Bloomberg .com and download The Circuit Companion podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Markets, headlines and breaking news 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com on Bloomberg television and the Bloomberg Business app. This is 940 on Wall Street. I'm Doug Krisner in New We York check markets for you throughout the day here on Bloomberg. We've got a little bit of a rally going on in the Japanese currency where the dollar is concerned 148 .45 that for a gain of around a half of one percent. Certainly there has been no shortage of volatility where the yen has been concerned this week. Tuesday morning US time the yen touched 150 per dollar and then a very sharp reversal. We strengthened against the greenback by around two percent. Now yesterday a top currency official in Japan was basically declining to confirm whether or not there had been in fact mention on the part of the Japanese Ministry of Finance and earlier today Asahi the Japanese newspaper was saying that move may have been triggered by an algorithm not intervention. Certainly helping out declining
The HUMAN Training
How Do We Ensure K9 Culture Trainers Are Up to Our Standards?
"Know, one of the things that we do that you're a huge part of, Julie, is kind of what you mentioned, Wyatt. Now, we have trainers that are working with the dog, so how do we make sure that the trainers are training? How do we make sure quality control standards, right? Yeah. So what do we do there, Winnie? Well, I mean, to some degree, there's some micromanaging going on. There has to be. Yeah. Just to make sure that everybody stays in line, I mean, I guess that's always going to be the problem. When you start to grow as a company and you have more people, you want to make sure everybody is staying to the standard that you're wanting to provide for clients or for people. For us, for me, at least as a lead trainer, my main job is to make sure that they are keeping up to the standards of certain obedience, right, every week and things like that. And so I make sure that they... Because we know average dogs, like Tuesdays, they start on Monday. By Tuesday, they should know how to do X. By Thursday, they should be able to do X, Y, and Z. Do you have them master it? No, but we know about where the average dog should be. Yes. Right. And so we're doing trainer evals. That's really what it's called. We're just evaluating the trainers every week to make sure that they are where they should be, where their dogs. And then we acknowledge that sometimes we're going to get a dog that's extremely anxious or extremely aggressive or whatever the case is. So kind we of change the expectations for that dog, but we still want to see progress. And so it's all about making sure that they're getting where they should be. In a week's time frame, since we do board and trains and the dogs go home on Friday, we got to make sure that in those five days they're making enough progress that they're going to be able to work on some things over the weekend with owners and then move on to something else the next week. Right. Yeah. And stay on pace at the end of two, three or four weeks, whatever the training program is that that dog's in, that we've achieved the goals that the owner has. And people just naturally drift, pick up bad habits. They do. We humans are so good about that. They're saying, screw this training, I'm going to do it my way. They will subconsciously shift their training style out of line with what you want them to do. So our evaluations kind of are also geared to keep that from happening. So that way we're consistently, we're being consistent in how we're training. I do love the evals though, because I feel like it makes the trainers want to do better. It makes them want to do better with their dogs. Kind of in a group format. Yeah. The third weeks and the two weeks evals, they're always in a group setting. Whereas the first week evals, I do those one on one. To see how the dog is doing and things. But yeah, definitely. I feel like it helps them want to do better and do cool things. And then in turn, they end up wanting to show those cool things to the owners. So it's not just about doing obedience and being monotonous. It's also about showing the cool things that their dog can do.
Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
Fresh "Thursday" from Afternoon News with Tom Glasgow and Elisa Jaffe
"7 stay connected stay informed 631 in Northwest News Radio your home for breaking news I'm Kim Shepard and here's what's happening the trial of three officers accused of killing Emanuel Ellis is underway in Tacoma he died in a confrontation with police three years ago the medical examiner ruled his homicide death but defense attorneys argue drugs found in Ellis's system were the cause officers Matthew Collins Timothy Rankin and Christopher Burbank are charged today the prosecution presented cell phone video of the incident which Grant expert witness Friedrich's walked the jury through there's two things that are occurring here cameras moving his left hand is moving but his left -hand blur is further which means it's faster than the motion of the camera and the trial is expected to last as long as two two months the proposed increase for the Pierce County Sheriff's budgets includes a decrease in the number of deputies funded did Northwest News Radio's Ryan Harris explains Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier says his call for an additional nine thirty million dollars for the sheriff's budget includes eliminating some vacant deputy in corrections jobs as he says the economy is forcing some belt tightening but Dammeier says a big chunk of the money will be for recruiting to fill open jobs which he says has been tough for law enforcement everywhere we know were down through actions of others others outside this room that there's been a real challenge in recruiting and hiring and getting the best people to serve those in very challenging positions Dammeier says public safety also means increasing prosecutors office and court budgets which he says is critical to meeting what three -quarters of county residents say they want catching criminals urging criminals trying criminals and getting them off the streets in our community the proposal also includes money to help small businesses through a safety and security grant program. For our Tacoma News Bureau, Ryan Harris, Northwest News after three years Boeing is just hours away from resuming those popular tours of their iconic airplane factory. Eighty minutes of a one -of -a -kind experience and you don't have to be an airplane geek. More than half of our visitors are from outside of North America travelers coming from are all over and every continent are really excited. Boeing has been giving public tours since the first 747 was built in 1968. It's the largest building planet on the and after a three -year pandemic -induced hiatus the future of flight is back. From our balcony one can see what's called the triple seven u -line which is the assembly process so there will be active In recent years the Boeing factory tour has attracted as many as 300 ,000 people and demand is high for the reopening. Ma. The company has made enhancements including an updated route and accompanying visual components. The first tour is set to take off Thursday morning. John Libertini, Northwest News Radio. Still ahead, move over shark week. I'm Brian Calvert with something larger, furrier and ready for a long winters now. And no he's not talking about me. 634 Northwest News Radio and we are your home for breaking news. Traffic and weather every 10 minutes on the force. In the high performance homes, traffic center Natalie Melendez. How's it looking? Well Kim, there's a lot of slowdowns on I -5 South tonight through Seattle. A crash at Ravenna is on the left shoulder, but traffic is solid to North Gate and in The Tacoma. I -5 South offered him to 16. A crash is on the right shoulder of the ramp, still causing some backups. This report is sponsored by Emerald Queen Casino. Legendary rock band Night Ranger comes to Emerald Queen Casino November 17th. Get ready for an electrifying night of rock with Night Ranger at the Emerald Queen Casino, the entertainment capital of the Northwest. Our next oldest traffic is 644. And your forecast sponsored by Northwest Crawlspace Services. Hi there everybody. Here comes a beautiful Thursday. We've got to find our way through some morning fog first. It will be a murky morning commute out there, especially in the South Sound with really low visibility around parts of Mason and Thurston counties in particular. Eventually though, bright blue skies, nice pumpkin patch day with mid 60s, 70s by Friday and Saturday in
The Breakdown
A highlight from Bitcoin Pops As Uptober Returns
"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 Monday, October 2nd, and today we are talking up -tober. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, today we are doing our normal slate of news, but we are couching it in a slightly different framing, which is, of course, up -tober. Now, to understand what I'm referring to, let's look at a tweet from StackHodler who writes, Welcome to up -tober. 8 out of the previous 10 Octobers were positive for Bitcoin. Average gain, plus 22%. Looming bullish catalysts. ETF approval leading to Bitcoin marketing push by BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, etc. Bond markets forcing central bank intervention. Awareness of US debt spiral spreading. Search for a hard asset alternative to bonds. Overpriced equities in real estate still priced for 3 % mortgage rates. Looming halving in early 2024. The weak hands have been brutally shaken out. If you held through the bear market, your patience has been tested. Bitcoin's volatility is designed to scare off everyone who doesn't understand the asset. But in the end, Bitcoin always rewards the patient long -term thinkers. StackSats enjoy fall. So today what we're going to do is look at the news of the last couple days, but in this framework of October. And sure enough, October got off to a hot start on Sunday with Bitcoin, Ethereum and numerous alts pumping hard on Sunday night. Bitcoin surged by 3 % in just 15 minutes, while Ethereum gained 4 .7 % across the same timeframe. Now part of October's history with Bitcoin can probably be explained by how dismal September tends to be. Over the past 10 years, for example, September has seen an average loss of 5 .6 % for Bitcoin. Although this time around, September was actually slightly positive with a 3 .9 % gain. That could reduce the tailwind of mean reversion for crypto markets, which would leave any bullish momentum reliant on a strong narrative push. Now when it comes to bullish narrative, of course the last week has been all about Ethereum and the imminent launch of new exchange -listed products. Nine of those products, specifically Ethereum Futures ETFs, were slated to begin trading this morning. Competing products from asset managers including VanEck, Bitwise, ProShares and Valkyrie battled it out for a share of the first -day inflows. Giving a preview of the day, Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balcones tweeted, All right, we got nine funds ready to go in the Ether's Futures ETFs derby which begins 9 .30 a .m. Monday. This is totally unprecedented to have so many ETFs doing the same thing launching the same day. Going to be a fascinating experiment and great foreshadowing an undercard to the spot Bitcoin ETF race. I'm setting the over -under for total AUM for all of them at the end of the week at 200 million. Logic being that Bitcoin Futures did 1 billion and ETH funds globally have 20 % of the assets under management of Bitcoin funds. Also, I think issuers will tap their client list to get as much volume and flow as they can get early. Now, at the time of recording, it was a little lackluster. Again, Eric Balcones tweets, Pretty meh volume for the Ether Futures ETFs as a group. A little under 2 million. About normal for a new ETF, but versus BITO, which did 400 million in first 15 minutes, it is low. Tight race between VanEck and ProShares and the single ETH lane. Now, going into a little bit more about some of the specific products that launched. One of the Ethereum ETFs that began trading was a strategy change from Valkyrie. The asset manager had been granted approval to convert its existing Bitcoin Futures ETF into a mixed Bitcoin and Ethereum fund. The ETF, which trades under the ticker BTF, had struggled since its 2021 launch, gathering just 25 million in assets under management. As a Bitcoin -only fund, the Valkyrie product had launched several days after the offering from ProShares. That gave ProShares a dominant first mover advantage, allowing it to gather a near monopoly in the market for Futures -based Bitcoin ETFs. Now, on Thursday, Valkyrie had begun accumulating a small amount of Ethereum Futures positions ahead of their strategy change becoming effective. Although this move appeared to be technically allowed, analysts noted it gave Valkyrie a jump on the competition. On Friday morning, Valkyrie announced, however, that it had reversed course and would not continue accumulating Ethereum positions. It would also unwind all existing positions that had been entered on Thursday. Bloomberg ETF analysts speculated that the SEC must have threatened them to get them to reverse course. Now, moving out more broadly, once it became clear that multiple Ethereum ETFs would be launching on the same day, analysts noted that the battle lines would be drawn against two dimensions, fees and marketing. It's very clear that the companies, very clear that however these initial results look, the companies are going to be pushing very hard. From a fees perspective, VanEck is at 66 basis points compared to 85 from Bitwise and 95 from ProShares. That said, due to a difference in structure, the VanEck ETF will have a less different tax treatment, which could make the savings and fees slightly less appealing. However, on the marketing side, VanEck premiered two 30 -minute advertisements on Thursday in anticipation of this week's launch, mostly to positive response from the crypto community. Bankless co -host David Hoffman said, Now, in seeming recognition of that, on Friday night, VanEck had... Now, in seeming validation of that point, on Friday night, VanEck announced that they would be donating 10 % of profits from their ETH ETF to the Protocol Guild, a group of over 150 Ethereum core developers.
Mark Levin
Fresh "Thursday" from Mark Levin
"Earlier than expected. Iris Bitzer San Francisco CDC says it's no longer distributing COVID -19 vaccine The Mark Levin show continues up next. Forecast from the Ramsey Mazda Weather Center tonight clear to partly cloudy lows in the low 60s Thursday partly sunny highs in the mid 70s Friday patchy fog in the morning then cloudy chance of showers 70s. 71 degrees clear outside the Midtown Manhattan studios. WBC news time Time is coming up on 806 I'm Bob Brown remember the news never stops at WABCradio talk radio 77 WABC
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from Upstream Works transforms United Airlines passenger, agent CX and EX, Podcast
"This is Doug Green and I'm the publisher of Telecom Reseller and I'm very pleased to have with us today Rob McDougall who is the CEO of Upstream Works. Rob, thank you for joining us today. Hey, great to be here, Doug. Good to talk with you again. Well, this is really exciting. I've been enjoying talking with you just before we started our podcast about what's going on in the AR market. And you know, what's exciting to me is we've been doing a series of podcasts the last few weeks where folks have been coming forward and talking about how they've made AI a practical tool for a company or for an organization or for maybe an entire industry. So we're going to be talking about an exciting story today about how Upstream Works has changed United Airlines and also about the idea of operationalizing AI. So we're going to be talking about those topics in a second, but for people that don't know Rob Upstream Works well or maybe know a little bit about you guys, what is Upstream Works? Upstream Works is a software application company. We focus on the agent experience and we provide an agent desktop application that's designed to run either on premise or in cloud so that your infrastructure doesn't matter. Our goal is to make sure that your agents have a consistent interface that they can work with across platforms, across applications, across channels. And these days we've been using the term EX. So what you're doing, it feeds right into that employee experience. Absolutely. We call it AX because we're focused on agents, but that's what it's all about. A happy agent is going to give a better service. We believe that that smile on the agent's face comes across the phone. It's a tough job. It's a tough market. You know, you can't find enough people to do that job today, so you want to keep those employees happy and they're the face of your company to the world. So with that in mind, you have actually taken AI and you're doing something called operationalizing AI. Sorry, that didn't come out so smoothly. So what is operationalizing AI? First, it's a tough word to say. I will give you that. Look at it this way. If I was to ask you, Doug, to go to my office, go to my computer, log in and add yourself into my CRM system or billing system, you wouldn't know what you had to do. You understand my ask, but you don't know where my office is. You don't know how to get into my computer. You don't know what my CRM or HR systems are. You don't know how they work. AI is the same thing. Even with the new generative AI model, is it really good at understanding? I know what the guy's asking, but I don't know how to do it. Operationalizing AI means doing that connectivity between what the AI can do and making it do something actually for your business. So integrating it into your backend systems, providing an interface that an agent can use to view things easily, using it to provide other business value like routing or translations, but making it actually work properly in your complex in silo the contact center. So this is really interesting because what you're telling me is it simplifies things. Well, tremendously. What we saw back in the early days of chat and email is a lot of people would put in chat and email, but they were discreet channels. They didn't integrate with the contact center. It was a bad experience for customers. You had to have specialized agents who got different training because the desktop interfaces were different. The tools were different. Omnichannel has now taken us into a realm where an agent can deal with sort of one set of tools across the different channels, but then you start throwing AI into the mix and it comes up in a different place. So you put in AI and it's got its own interface. So I need special agents to do something over here, or it doesn't actually integrate with the other tools that I have in the contact center. So I've got to make all that stuff work together. And this is what Upstreamworks has been doing for 23 years is being the spider in the middle of the web and taking the applications that are important for your business and help you make those work for the business and for the agents to make their life easier. So it's interesting that you're using a new thing to basically follow your brand story, which has what you're describing sounds like what Upstream is all about. Absolutely. We focus on enterprise contact centers. We don't go for the small contact center. And the reason we focus there is because large enterprises, when they deal with products, what they want is something that's shrink wrapped in out of the box, like Word, and they just put in the disk and it all works, but it's got to work exactly the way they work. And that doesn't exist. So what we have always done is we built a product that is designed to provide all the features out of the box, but have all the configurability and integratability such that I can integrate it into the workflows that the company has and make those work properly in an enterprise environment. And AI is no different. You could look at a manufacturer who's going to say, oh, we'll put in our product and here's our AI. And the company says, well, that's nice, but we use this other AI. That's where Upstream works comes in. And they may use Amazon AI for translations, and they may use Google AI to search their knowledge base, and they use Watson to look up their medical information. They may have different AI applications. Our goal is to make them all work and make it seamless to the agent. So the agent doesn't know there's different AIs happening. It's just there's stuff that shows up and stuff happens. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your product line and offerings right now, but maybe you could tell me that in the context of where you're offering this operationalizing AI service. Well, it comes as an actual part of our product, right? It's right there. It's right there. So one of the components is a desktop component called Virtual Agent Portal. And we spent a lot of time kind of working through what to name this, because we didn't want people to start thinking we're providing AI to them, because we're not an AI provider. But what Virtual Agent Portal allows you to do, it's a kind of an open placeholder, so that if I need to interact between an agent and an AI on the desktop, it can go into Virtual Agent Portal. And I can do things like I can try Amazon, or I could switch it out for Google, because maybe I get a better price. The agent doesn't see the difference. I don't need to retrain them. I'm using a certain AI, and I put in a different training model, and I want to do some A -B testing to see which one's giving me better results. The agent won't see the difference. Virtual Agent Portal handles all that in the background and feeds the information back to management to say, okay, yeah, the new changes are working, so we're going to now use that AI. But it's all about making it transparent to the agent, so they're focused on the customer and my understanding is that with all this, you guys have now developed and are operating with a very big customer. Yeah, somebody we've been having a lot of fun with over the summer is United Airlines. So they're a big Cisco shop. They've got Cisco UCCE. They've got Cisco Webex. And they had this concept that they called Agent on Demand. And what they wanted to be able to do was to provide airline -side services to customers remotely. And with Webex and the Cisco Contact Center product, those things didn't work together. So Cisco brought in Upstream Works, and so we're kind of the glue between all this. So now what happens at United Airlines is, and if you're traveling and you're at United, look around because you're going to see QR codes all over the place. You can shoot the QR code with your phone, and you will get hooked up with a live video call with the United Gate agent. So it's for doing airline -side things. So can't buy my baggage. I got to go change my flight. I want to change my seat. You know, all the stuff that you could go up to the gate to do, there's a big lineup, or you're in the United Club having a drink and you want to do this, you can now do this on your phone remotely. From a customer experience point of view, it's an awesome thing. But what's even better about it is think about gate agents. These are the people who are standing at the gate and they're doing stuff and then you board your flight and then they go back in the back room and they sit around until their next flight. Well, now what they do is they go back in the back room and United has little, I'll call them informal contact centers in every airport. Gate agents leave their post, they go back and they get on the phone and they start dealing with other customers from all over the world. So from United's point of view, they're now getting much better utilization of their staff and they're assisting people at any airport where there's United Airlines. And from the customer's point of view, they just know that, hey, I want to change my seat and I can do it on my phone and talk to a person to do it. So it's a win for the customers and it's an absolute win for United as well because now, you know, I don't have to line up to do this stuff and I can better utilize my agents. It just occurred to me that it's liberating for both sides of that equation. In other words, as you were mentioning from the customer point of view, now I don't have to stand even, you know, it was used to be a problem. I have to find the right line to stand in. That is, you know, we've all had that experience. I can just click on one of these wherever I am in the airport and get help. Yeah, absolutely. You hit the QR code and it's going to ask for your flight number. So you put your flight number in and your passenger name, and then you're going to get to the right person to talk about the right stuff. It doesn't matter what line you're going to get in because it's skills routed to the right person. Wow. And that also means that remote, to your point, remote agents, whether they're at an informal contact center, a little mini one in the back office there behind the gate, or maybe just as in a more, it may be out of a home even, right there, there is help now, you know, late at night, maybe there's no one at the little airport in a smaller center, which United does fly in and out of, maybe you're just talking to someone somewhere else. That smaller center, you could talk to an agent at home, but you could also be talking to an agent who's on shift at O 'Hare in between flights. Right. So that's really, that really is an amazing step forward. And it really, it leverages all the technologies already in place. Yeah. And then, and then they went further because they said, you know what we, cause you can, you can escalate between voice video and chat on the application. You don't have to do video call. You can also just chat with the agent as well. But they've also got translations. So they're using, I believe it's Amazon for doing, there's Google, sorry, they're using Google to do translations, but now I can go on, I can click that QR code, say I'm Spanish. I can type in in Spanish, what the agent sees is coming up in English and they answer in English and the person gets it back in Spanish. And this is a great use of generative AI because that's, I will say a year ago, when you showed translations in a demo, it was anyone spoke the language went, yeah, that doesn't really work. The language was stilted generative AI has, has changed the game on translations because generative AI can translate really well. So that's a very excellent use case for it. This is very exciting because it sort of opens up so many doors that, you know, the, the agent might be in Berlin, the, the, the other, the passenger might be in Mexico city and they're able to talk to each other in their own languages. Yep. And you can do it across industry as well. Think about, you know, you as a person, you go to a drug store and you need to consult with a doctor and they've got a nurse practitioner there who can triage. And then click a QR code and get a video conference going with a doctor who may be at a central site. Now I'm sitting, having a conversation with a medical professional via video that's been queued up. And, you know, on the doctor's side, he's between patients, he logs onto the system and he just starts taking some calls and he can deal with patients. And now I don't have to have doctors everywhere. I can centralize them and I put nurse practitioners around. So there's a lot of healthcare uses for the same type of application. Hey Rob, let's stay with that a second, but in both cases, because, um, do you, do you, I'm going to use maybe the wrong term, but is there a continuity on each case? In other words, let's say, um, I opened up a conversation as a United customer or as a, as a patient and it's concluded, but now I have the same problem maybe four hours later. Will the next person who helps me know about my last conversation? Well, we captured the interaction history of every interaction that happens. So the answer, the quick answer is yes. Um, as a, as an agent or a doctor or a gate agent, uh, you can go back and review the previous recording, um, or the transcript of what's going on, or again, another great use of generative AI. You could also get a summary delivered back to you of what had gone on on that previous call, but that whole contact history is tracked. So every single time Doug Green contacts, they're going to be able to say Doug Green always contacts us and says, we screwed his seat up. He does this every single flight. So maybe he's just pulling our leg. So, you know, it works both ways. And that's really amazing because that's the type of information, you know, old school that, you know, there would be someone around who knew some other people and would say, yeah, look at Doug. And this is, he does that all the time. Here's how to handle it. Now we're able to do this on a, on a, and that must make agent life or the doctor life, whoever's receiving the contact a little bit easier, right? They've, they've got that contextual and historical information. Yeah. We've always believed, I was talking about the elephant never forgets. And I've always believed that as a person contacting a business, there are certain things that I know the business should know those things as well. Most importantly, I know that I called last Thursday about the same thing. The business should know that the agent who picks up my call, this is, you know, this is video or just a voice call, but the agent should know that as well. And that's the important part of interaction history. So regardless of the channel you come in on, the agent has access to that information and they can see what that context is. Cause that's all important to them providing you good service. Rob, you know, I know it's early days and, and, but you know, this was an historic summer for travel. So United you've already flown, if you will, through a challenging time. What's the reaction, what's United telling you and what are customers saying what's happening? Uh, United loves it. Um, all of the airlines are aware of it and are looking and, and want to understand how they've done it. Um, we're getting a lot of inbound, uh, requests coming in from basically all the major airline carriers from very senior people. Um, I think over the Labor Day weekend, it was something like, I don't know, 2 .3 or 2 .8 million passengers went through Chicago O 'Hare airport, uh, and NBC news and Chicago did a section on United and all the travelers and right in the middle of it is, and they have this agent on demand application and they show here's a phone talking to an agent. That's the upstream application right there, which was very cool. So Rob, you know, uh, with this, this, uh, work you're doing with United, I understand they turned to you because they were able to find you as a reliable source for this. So original the agent on demand idea, uh, came from United. Um, and they, they did a proof of concept to say, okay, it kind of works, but it wasn't robust enough for sort of the enterprise you will. Um, and they turned to Cisco who was sort of their trusted communications provider and said, can you do this? And Cisco looked into it and they came back and said, no, we can't get all the bits and pieces, but we can't make them work together. And then somebody inside Cisco who knew upstream, wasn't talk to upstream. And so Cisco came to us and we said, yeah, of course we can do that. So it went back to United said, okay, we have a solution. Um, and we put that into United and they'd been extremely happy with the stability and how well it works. So everything's great. And since then it's, I don't, I mean, maybe it's early to say this, it sounds like it's on its way to becoming an industry standard. Uh, we're getting a ton of inbound interest. People are coming up and saying, you know, we, we, we've heard about the agent on demand. We want to know how it works and how you do it. And, and now we find out that upstream works is kind of the key enabler here. So, yeah, we're getting a lot of inbound demand on it, which is great. Well, uh, I wanted to, uh, conclude our podcast with just about how we can get a hold of products from upstream works. I understand that you're a channel oriented company. So do you have a channel pro program? We have a channel program. Uh, we do not sell directly at all. Uh, we have distribution channels, uh, throughout, uh, Canada, the U S and Europe. Um, we're available, um, on the Amazon platform, we're available on the Cisco platforms. Um, and we are expanding our market. So if there's, you know, if you're one of our resellers, uh, you know, you, you can, you can get at this. Um, if you're new to us and you want to talk with us, you've got some opportunities you want to discuss. Uh, we do have a channel program. We're really easy to deal with. Um, basically we can sign you up and then we'll do all the heavy lifting and until such time as you want to take on as much of the sales training and implementation training as you want to based on your business needs. Sounds like a great way for a channel partner right now or an MSP to win with AI. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this is an exciting, ongoing story, Rob. I really hope that we get to do an additional podcast, maybe just about the United application, if you will, or, or that the, what you're doing there and in healthcare and maybe some other industries, learn some more news and do some stuff in the future. But for now, I want to thank you for joining us. Where can we learn more about upstream works? www .upstreamworks .com. Well, I hope everyone takes a visit and takes a second look, but for now, thanks very much for joining me today. Thank you, Doug. It's been really fun.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from Part 2: Zach Wilsons Alive, Belichicks in Trouble, Buffalos Cruising, and Week 5 Lines With Cousin Sal
"All right. So we're taping part one here. It is a little past 4 o 'clock Pacific time. Just watch the Pats completely shit the bed. We're not going to talk about that. That'll be part two. Part one. Ryan Russilla was here. We're talking Drew Holiday. The big trade. How is the NBA different for you right now, and are we done? Do we finally have the 30 rosters? Is this what we're looking at? Do we know who's going to be on everybody's team, or are we somehow not done? I never think we're done anymore in the NBA, and I know you're being a gracious host here, but you and I talked for five minutes today. I think you have the headline take on this, okay? I think you have the headline take on what the top of the league looks like. Are you ready to share it this early? I think Boston has the best top six. I did not feel that way 24 hours ago. I did not feel like there was a clear best. I trust this team in crunch time, and if Porzingis stays healthy, which is a huge if, I think they have the best six, and they can fill around, and they have the most ways that they can play whoever in the series. So from that vantage point, you had to do the trade. And they gave up a center who has been hurt every single year, and I don't fully trust that he's ever going to be out there when it matters. Brogdon, who was hurt, who was mad at the team, and two picks. And you get Drew Holliday, who was a 2021 Finals hero, who's one of the best defensive guards in the league, who's still really good, and just raises their ceiling. Now you can go white Holliday, Tatum Brown, and a center at crunch time, and you're good. You can switch on almost everything, especially if you get anything from Horford. So were you similarly enthused? Yeah, I love Drew. There's some stuff with his shooting in the playoffs where it's been pretty bad, or you're like, is that just because you can't make shots at the playoffs, or is it just what happened statistically? I mean, it does happen. I mean, if I'm getting the negative parts out of the way, like, yeah, sure, he's a little bit older. The big situation is a huge question mark. I can't believe what they got from Horford last year. So I don't know if you can just pencil that in, because he was way beyond expectations, at least for me, or for what I had for him. But when you can add Drew for those pieces, and I'm with you, when Rob Williams is right, it's really, really nice. But you can even tell when he's out there, you're like, is something wrong with him again? The number of times that I've watched Rob Williams in Celtics games, I'm like, I know he's out there, but wait, something. And every time, I thought Marcus Smart was trying to end his career with some of those Valley U passes, depending on how he lands, like, wait, is this going to be the last one we ever see from him? So to me, it makes a lot of sense. By the way, on that Rob point, my dad texted me after the trade, he's like, oh, I hate giving up Rob. I'm like, you complained about Rob more than anybody I know in my life. You would text me from the games going, oh, Rob's just off in the, Rob just walked in the tunnel again. I don't know what happened. I like just Brian Barrett had a tweet, 32 games, 29 games, 52 games, 61 games, 35 games. Those are Rob Williams' last five years. It just wasn't reliable enough for a team that's trying to win a title. I interrupted you. No, you didn't, because it's a it's a really good point, because what's going to happen? I mean, you know, it's just there's there's definitely like if Prozingis is hurt, it feels like the whole thing is screwed up and there's a really good chance that that could happen. But if you're talking about like the allocation of minutes and the talent that's getting those minutes, well, the talent that's getting those minutes just went up with Drew Holiday. And that's, I think, the simplest way to look at it. So they they turn Marcus Smart and Grant Williams and Brogdon and Rob Williams into Drew Holiday and Prozingis, more Derek White minutes, more Peyton Pritchard minutes. And then there's a little bit of an X factor with who's going to be like that ninth man, tenth man, kind of big four slash five person, maybe, or somebody you trade like that. I feel like that's the easiest position to pick up in January and February. The big thing for me is I think White was ready for a bigger role. I think White and Holiday together is magnificent as a as a backcourt. And I read some stuff today. They think White's going to come off the bench. I don't know if I see that. I think I would come out of the gates with White and Holiday and Tatum and Brown in the center and maybe bring to your Horford point, like maybe bring Horford off the bench and try to really try to rest his minutes during the season and be careful with him and make him a bench player. And then the playoffs reassess. But I think that having those four guys all together, they complement each other so well. You can play basically any kind of defense against any perimeter guy in the league. Those four guys and they're just better. I mean, there's there's just no way around it. They're better. He's a much better player than Marcus Smart was last year. And you know, you made that point about the shooting. He'd have those games. He'd go 5 for 22 in a playoff game. You know, he'd eat. But I do feel like he was asked to do a little bit more than maybe what he's supposed to be doing. I don't feel like he's a pure point guard. Right. Now you have White who can handle most of the ball handling. He could play off the ball and they're going to get the best version of him. Awesome locker room guy, too, by all accounts. I mean, really like a beloved teammate wherever he went. And I think they wanted to change the chemistry a little bit. I think this was an unhappier team than maybe they led on to the outside world last year. Yeah. Look, I definitely like him more than Smart. And you know, to be totally fair, when I'm looking at like the Lillard side of this trade last week before we knew the second piece of Drew and upgrading from Drew to Lillard, I'm going, OK, well, now you're top two in Milwaukee's like in the argument for the best two in the NBA. OK, that's that's really what this league has been about now post the teens decade where it was the arms race for your top three. It's you look around the league, you go, OK, who's got the two best? Like, let's come up with the five teams who have the two best. And with Lillard and Giannis, that's like a whole nother level. So when I was looking at it, it's like Lillard compared to Drew, you know, Drew is not somebody you're expecting to break down a defense off the dribble. Right. Oh, we're stuck into the shot clock, like make something happen where Lillard can literally do anything right in the final second of the shot clock and still you feel like it's still a decent look. So that part of it's a huge upgrade. But he's number three to four as far as an offensive option. He also and I don't know, this is just me talking out loud as I thought about the trade. It's pretty clear that when Boston's offense gets into trouble in the playoffs, like Tatum and Brown haven't figured out a way to kind of unlock it other than just like I can already picture my head like I know what the Tatum move is going to be. I already know what the Jaylen Brown move is going to be. And I don't know if Smart was able to make their life easier with the playmaking. And then sometimes I even think Smart would go like, well, if you guys are going to screw around, like I might just I might just be green light on this possession. I don't think Drew necessarily plays that way. So, you know, it's probably silly for me to think that like Drew is going to be the Steve Nash type who comes in and sets up all these great late playoff possessions. But there may be something in lessening the burden of those guys feeling that they have to do or defaulting to just forcing the issue as much as they do in the playoffs. I like how much ball handling they have, to your point, because they were talking about experimenting a little bit more with Tatum as a point forward this year, which makes me nervous a little bit just because, you know, he's six foot nine. I'm not sure that's the best use of him, but they seem pretty adamant. Like we feel like he could be a little bit more of a creator. And then you think White can do that. To me, White is the key to this season now, because if, you know, other than the Porzingis health thing, which I almost I'm going to knock on wood, but part of the reason they made all this movement and they got rid of Brogdon and Smart was I think they really wanted to push White to be the lead ball handler for them and a creator. And there's some unbelievable pick and roll stats with him. And just if certain people set him a pick in the way, even in the Miami series, he was one of the only guys who could create offense. So I think they have that plus they have Drew. And the reality is for Drew, this is this might be the deepest offensive team he's been on. Right. When you think back to like it was on some pretty weird Philly teams and some pretty weird New Orleans teams, and even when Milwaukee was at its best, it was really just Giannis, Middleton and Drew. And that was it. This is there's more shooting and playmaking around him than I think we've seen. Maybe it'll be a slight upgrade on the flip side. He doesn't have Giannis, who was the second best player of the century, probably, but I like the spot for him. It seemed like he really wanted to go to a contending team and I don't really know who they were competing against because for reading through some of the reports, it just seemed like Philly. I don't even know what the trade was for them. Portland wanted at least one piece back, probably two that they could do their keeper package. They wanted picks back. Golden State wasn't even in it. And it didn't seem like OKC ever threw their hat in the ring, which I was shocked by because I felt like OKC was the sleeping giant of this whole thing with Dort and some picks and just say, fuck it, let's let's see if we can be really good this year. So it seemed like it was down to Boston. The Clippers, they just had more assets. I don't know if Portland keeps Rob. He's on a good contract. They already have Ayton. My guess is that they're probably spinning him. Does it make sense that both of those guys? My sense is they're going to try it out, you know, but, you know, the thing with Rob is like, if you think he's an awesome defensive player that's just out there, like he's awesome when he's used a certain way. And once Boston unlocked that two years ago, where they stuck him on a non shooting big and then you could see other teams adapt to it, it's like, well, let's stop giving them an out where Rob can just roam off of this dude that's not a shooting threat, because I think that, you know, this is just going to turn into like now that he's not here. But I mean, have you listened to us talk about Rob Williams at all last couple of years? He you know, I don't I don't think he's I know what the defensive metrics are. I know the on off stuff. It's a big reason why I think the analytics models always love Boston. Like sometimes you look at him and be like, hey, I think this team's good, but like these numbers are overwhelming. This is like, yeah, it's it's so far like as if there's this huge gap between Boston and everybody else, which I never really felt going back these last two years. But you're if Chauncey Billups and you think like, OK, Rob Williams is going to go out there and like wreak havoc, it's like, well, he has to be used a certain way. So maybe they feel like that's in defensive support to Aiten. And with Aiten, you know, I have I'm not quite sure what to expect. Well, this is the one thing he's probably going to put up huge numbers because he's not going to have older dudes that have a higher status in the league that go, I'm sick of passing it to you. So he's probably going to get more touches. We'll probably see like early Aiten numbers and like twenty to ten for the first six weeks of the season. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. Like he'll he'll he'll put up some big numbers there. But, you know, defensively, it's really about his competitiveness because there were times I think going back two years ago when we were thinking about him with that run of the Suns, the finals, you're like, look at this guy. Like he can switch out on the smaller players. You can rotate. But it's all about the way he's wired. And I think long term, unfortunately, like we already kind of know the answer there. Like I don't think all of a sudden now you start playing with some fierceness after being in the league this long. So he was the fifth option on that team and there seemed to be real resentment toward him in that whole Phoenix culture of like, why doesn't he just realize we don't need his offense? We need him to basically rebound and block shots and crash the offensive boards. I think his attitude was probably twenty five years old. I want to be the best player I can be. I already went to a finals. I don't that's not I think I could do more than that. So I don't I don't think anyone was necessarily wrong. As I said, on my Thursday pot, I just hated the trade for Phoenix. I just thought they got the poopoo platter back. You know, they got some some some spare ribs back and a couple of egg rolls and and that's it. But they did not get an entree back. And I think he's an entree on the right team, whether he's a guy that made sense for them. I don't know. But I know that they didn't get a good haul for him. I think Rob, for his contract, for what his talents are, is a really intriguing piece for them or for another team, because you could trade for him. And it's not like a daunting salary. Right. I think he's in what is what is it, like 15 a year or something like that? No, it's a really good. Yeah. I mean, it was a really low cost extension and he's still a pretty young guy. Yes, so.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 12:00 09-30-2023 12:00
"Investment Advisors, switch to interactive brokers for lowest cost global trading and turnkey custody solutions. No ticket charges and no conflicts of your interests at ibkr .com slash ria. George Lavender, Marshall Louie and Jen Sargent for Wondery. I'm Hannah Miller and this is Bloomberg. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. The clock is ticking on a government shutdown. Federal funding runs out at midnight with no deal in sight. House Republicans are meeting behind closed doors this morning to find a way forward after failing to pass a short term funding resolution on Friday. The Senate is set to vote at 1 p .m. on its proposed stopgap funding measure, but it's unclear if Speaker Kevin McCarthy would bring the measure to the House floor for a possible vote. L .A. Mayor Karen Bass is among those mentioned to fill Dianne Feinstein's U .S. Senate seat for the remainder of the term. Governor Gavin Newsom said in March he would nominate a black female if Feinstein retired before the end of her term. A spokesperson for Bass said at the time that the mayor would absolutely not consider stepping down to fill the Senate seat. Senator Feinstein passed away Thursday night. Full weekend service is up and running on New York City subways and buses, despite historic rainfall and flooding that inundated the system on Friday. Jennifer Polcioni reports. Governor Hogle praising the efforts of those who kept the city moving on Friday as best as it could, while some areas experienced the most rain seen in some 70 years, she says. Metro North, the LIRR, city subways and buses functioning a day after delays in suspensions as heavy rains poured into the Bass transit system. Hogle crediting M .T .A. leadership with planning ahead by rerouting trains and having pumps in place in advance to clear as much as possible.
The Breakdown
A highlight from ETH Futures ETFs Get Set to Trade as Government Shut Down Looms
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, N .L .W. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, September 29th, and today we are talking ETF approvals. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us in the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. All right, friends, lots of action to wrap up your week. We're going to talk a little bit of ETF announcements and then we're going to get into the government shutdown and, of course, give you all of the information that you need. Now we start with the SEC in the world of ETFs. That organization has been busy over the past few days making decisions on a variety of different crypto applications. Now, there are currently three major batches of crypto ETF applications that are being considered. On Thursday, four Spot Bitcoin ETFs were delayed, including the BlackRock application. Two additional Spot Bitcoin ETFs were already delayed on Tuesday. Announcements delaying the rest of the similar applications are expected to follow today and are likely to be published by the time the show is released. The next deadline for the SEC to consider approving Spot Bitcoin ETFs is on January 10th. That's an important one because it's the final deadline for the ARK21 shares application, so it will require an explanation from the SEC rather than just a simple delay. The second batch are the Ethereum Spot ETFs, which were also delayed. On Wednesday, the SEC deferred their decision on products from VanEck and ARK21 shares. The next deadline for regulatory consideration falls on December 26th. The SEC can delay further on these products with the final deadline falling in May. Now, overall, the delay of Spot crypto ETFs has not been particularly surprising. As much as people have wanted the legal decision from the Grayscale suit to force the SEC's hand, that court order is still able to be appealed, and there is nothing really compelling the SEC to move forward with Spot ETFs for the time being. Now, the more interesting developments surround Ethereum futures -based ETFs. Throughout August, at least 24 applications were filed, including some products offering short Ethereum exposure and combined long exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum within a single fund. Throughout the week, there have been rumblings that the SEC was preparing to approve futures -based Ethereum products, asking investment firms to update their documents by Friday afternoon. The rumor was that ETFs could begin trading as soon as Tuesday. On Thursday morning, VanEck debuted two 30 -second advertisements for their Ethereum futures product, which would trade under the ticker eFute. VanEck are going with the tagline Enter the Ether and commenting on the ad, Eric Valkunas, the senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg said, Now, later in the day, VanEck updated their prospectus for the fund. The ETF will only charge 66 basis points in fees. This is below the dominant pro -shares Bitcoin futures ETF, which is ticker symbol BITO, which charges 95 basis points. The lowest fee product seems to be Roundhill at just 19 basis points. Also on Thursday, Valkyrie announced that they would begin buying Ethereum futures on Friday in anticipation of altering the strategy of their existing Bitcoin futures ETF. The fund will now hold half Bitcoin futures and half Ethereum futures. The new strategy will be formally adopted on Monday under the existing ticker symbol BTF. Later yesterday as well, Valkyrie's chief investment officer, Stephen McClurg, said that both VanEck and pro -shares had been given the green light to launch their dedicated Ethereum futures ETFs on Monday. A pro -shares spokesperson said no one is in a position to launch ahead of us but declined to elaborate further on timing. Now, part of the reason that the SEC may be trying to move up all these delays and announcements is the looming threat of a government shutdown. Indeed, a government shutdown is at this point all but certain to begin on Sunday after House Republicans failed to come to a suitable agreement during a tense closed -door meeting on Thursday night. The House passed several versions of an appropriations bill that would authorize government spending on Thursday, but reportedly none have any chance of passing the Senate. The Senate are working on a bipartisan proposal for short -term funding, but this measure is unlikely to be passed by House Republicans. Tensions have flared between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz, who is playing a major role in pushing the government into a shutdown. The dispute is around demands to slash government spending with a more specific demand that war efforts in Ukraine are defunded. Now, a government shutdown would end all funding of non -essential government programs until an appropriations bill can be passed. The length of a shutdown would be unknown. However, most government agencies are making plans to shutter for multiple weeks if not well into November. The impact of a shutdown will be largely felt by government workers who will not receive paychecks, as well as the recipients of government benefits. Social Security and Medicare continue to operate as usual during a shutdown, but the patchwork of other social programs will be paused. Now, when it comes to the macro environment, one of the other implications is that a shutdown would halt the collection of economic data. The next Fed meeting isn't until the end of October, but if the shutdown stretches out for a substantial period, the Fed could be faced with making a decision without key economic reports gauging inflation, employment, and growth. That would, of course, leave the Fed flying blind as they attempt to bring the economy in for a soft landing.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Heres How Sam Bankman-Frieds High-Stakes Trial Could Play Out
"Arbitrum's leading layer two scaling solution offers you ultra cheap and lightning fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's guest is Nick Day, Coindesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation. Welcome, Nick. Thanks for having me. The trial for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman -Fried starts next Tuesday, October 3rd. There's been a lot happening pre -trial. For instance, Sam has requested release from jail multiple times and repeatedly been denied, including as recently as Thursday morning. My personal thought was that it seemed like all these requests that the defense was putting in at this critical juncture right before the trial was supposed to begin was maybe not the best use of their time, but that's just my personal opinion. I'm not a lawyer. Why do you think they made this such a point of focus in the last few days? Yeah. So I'm actually coming, you know, I was in the courthouse just a few hours ago where this very issue was brought up and the, you know, defense's arguments were, well, the first time we asked it was for pre -trial release. You know, this was right after Bankman -Fried was remanded into custody in mid -August. The second time was, you know, they were asking an appeals court to overrule the judge's decision to remand him and they lost that as well. In court today, the defense said, well, you know, now we want to ask for during trial, which is why we waited until this week to make that request. And they say that they want to, you know, the circumstances are different. They're not asking for Bankman -Fried to be released from jail in the weeks leading up to trial. Now they're saying, well, you know, during the trial, we're going to have to talk to him and check with him about defense witness testimony and cross -examination and things like that. So that's why we're making this request. And the judge didn't really find that compelling. And why do you think the judge has stuck to this position of keeping Bankman -Fried in jail? So in the judge's words, there's a couple of different reasons. One being that Bankman -Fried has had ample time to look at the defense materials. You know, one of the arguments was there are something like 1300 exhibits expected over the course of the trial. And the judge asked today, you know, were these all prepared and shared with you before, I think he said September 8th, so earlier this month. And the defense, they said, yes, we've seen all of this. We've had access to all of this. Bankman -Fried was out on bail for about seven and a half months. And so the judge's argument is, well, he's had time to look at this. You know, there's no surprises here. And he said that the defense has the chance to talk with Bankman -Fried in the Metropolitan Detention Center where he's currently being housed weekends during days that there are no trials. So, you know, the trial is not every weekday. It's going to be most weekdays. And he said, you know, you have the time, you have the opportunity, you are able to talk to your client. You're not really losing a whole lot. But he added kind of a, you know, made this ruling where Bankman -Fried will even be presented to the courthouse early on trial days where there's certain witness testimony that has to be discussed and let the attorneys just talk to him before the trial begins on those days. So he's saying basically, you know, you have opportunities to talk to your client and I'm going to give you more time to do so, but I'm not going to let Bankman -Fried out of jail. So the main focus next week as the trial begins will be jury selection. Tell us what you think that process will be like. It definitely will be interesting. I think it's probably going to be very boring from just kind of an observer perspective because it's a long process and we're going to be just sitting there watching this judge ask each individual, have you heard of FTX? Have you heard of Bankman -Fried? What do you think about cryptocurrencies? But it's going to be very interesting because this is the part where we're really going to get a sense of, okay, you know, these are the 12 or so people who are going to determine whether or not Bankman -Fried spends the next, you know, 10 to 20 years of his life behind bars and so I'm expecting to see maybe as mixed selection. I think if you pluck a random group of New Yorkers off the streets, some of them may have heard of cryptocurrency. Most of them probably will not have and they're going to be tasked with deciding whether or not one of the biggest figures in crypto committed fraud on the way up and on the way down. Something that was interesting to me was the prosecution said that they expected jury selection to take the better part of a day. I've seen some legal opinions that it will take longer than that. What do you think could potentially happen there and why do you think some analysts are saying that it would take longer? Yeah, no, I've spoken to a number of lawyers as well ahead of the trial, you know, where at Coindes we're trying to do a lot of kind of preview coverage, basically saying here's how it might go down. Everyone I spoke to said it will probably take a couple days. Part of that is because this is a fairly notorious case. A lot of people will have heard about Bankman -Fried and presumably formed some kind of opinion that would, you know, disqualify them from being a juror on the trial. I'm not sure where the DOJ is getting their estimate from. It's very possible that, you know, through the questionnaires that the jury pool is sent through the, you know, the kind of the mass selection process or deselection process that the judge engages in. Maybe that streamlines a big part of it by kind of, you know, reducing or like immediately filtering out the people who are most blatantly, you know, either knowledgeable or biased or otherwise have their own preformed viewpoints about the case. And so the jury selection might just be focused on, you know, those individuals who have made it through those initial filtering processes. But that's speculation on my part. I honestly am not sure if it is a better part of the day that we could see opening statements as soon as next Wednesday, October 4th, which would be a pretty rapid start to the trial. And Coindesk did some work to try to suss out what it is that Lower Manhattan New Yorkers might say if they were randomly picked for a jury. What did you discover there? Yeah, no. So Coindesk's Dylan and Victor went to Manhattan, downtown Manhattan to the financial district, and literally just went up to people and said, hey, we're with Coindesk. Have you heard of FTX? Have you heard of Sam Bankman Fried? And a fairly large part of this group just hadn't heard about it. You know, they weren't familiar with it. They weren't comfortable talking about crypto. They weren't familiar with crypto. And of those who were, you know, I think they found a fairly even mix. There were some individuals who had heard about Bankman Fried, some individuals who had only heard about crypto, some individuals who were very knowledgeable. They actually found a, you know, a Yahoo anchor who was the most knowledgeable about it, naturally, as you know, a reporter covering the financial space. But they also found people who were looking for jobs in crypto, people who were investors in the space. By and large, it seems to, you know, a lot of the people they spoke to just weren't interested or talking, interested in talking about crypto or in, you know, being part of this, being part of crypto. So if that is a representative sample of who we'll see next week at the jury pool, it'll be interesting because we'll see a large, potentially large, jury pool of people who aren't familiar with crypto. Again, on one of the biggest, you know, bang in on one of the biggest figures in the space. Recently, the defense proposed certain questions that it would ask the jurors and the government said that they felt these were quote unquote intrusive. What were some of the questions that were proposed and what was the government's response? Yeah. So, you know, the background here is both the DOJ and the defense team filed their proposed jury questions to help filter potential jurors. The defense team in particular had a number of questions about, you know, how these potential jurors felt about things like effective altruism, about political donations, about ADHD and people who have ADHD. And the DOJ response was really, you know, they felt that some of these questions, for example, about effective altruism and about political donations seemed kind of primed to or designed to prime the potential jurors to think, oh, well, Bankman Fried was trying to do all of this in service of this effective altruism philosophy. Therefore, he was trying to raise money to donate to better the world or designed to try and prime the jury to think, okay, well, you know, political donations is fine. So these allegations about breaking the law in the way he tried to donate funds maybe is, you know, overreach or whatever. And then the intrusive part, you know, treating just kind of this question of ADHD and whether or not people were, you know, involved with individuals who had it or the DOJ just felt that these questions were really designed to try and shape how the jury would see Bankman Fried as opposed to just kind of gauge their existing biases. And so the DOJ opposed these questions. And I think we're still waiting to see for sure if there's any public response on the judge prior to jury selection on Tuesday. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about different legal strategies that the defense might pursue. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Arbitrum stands at the forefront of innovation as the premier suite of Layer 2 scaling solutions, bringing you lightning fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all with security rooted on Ethereum. From DeFi to gaming, Arbitrum 1 plus Nova is home to over 500 projects. And with the recent launch of Orbit, Arbitrum welcomes you to build your very own Taylor Layer 3 or an Orbit chain. Propel your project and community forward by visiting arbitrum .io today. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Easy to use token grant award templates, vesting tracking via online dashboard, tax withholding integration with payroll, automated distributions, great employee experience. Make it simple with Toku. Learn more at toku .com slash Unchained.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
SBF TRIAL: 09/29 Update
"Welcome to the SBF trial, a Coindesk podcast network newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman -Fried will try to stay out of prison. Follow the Coindesk podcast network to get the audio each morning with content from the Coindesk regulation team and voiced by Wondercraft AI. In a rare display of candor or as part of a calculated exercise in reputation management, Sam Bankman -Fried delved deep into his mental health struggles in a trove of unposted tweets obtained by Coindesk's Christine Lee and published for the first time on Friday. I don't really know what happiness means, he said in one of the tweets, which he wrote just weeks after his crypto empire blew up last year as he was facing down a tidal wave of public scorn. The tweets published by Coindesk strike a similar tone to those obtained earlier this month by the New York Times. In both cases, it's difficult to discern whether Bankman -Fried's musings provide an authentic glimpse into the beleaguered crypto founder's psyche or whether his mental health battles and personal anecdotes have been played up for sympathy. On this front, it's impossible to fairly speculate, though it seems likely that Bankman -Fried's mental health struggles could play a role in his defense. Also this week, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing Bankman -Fried's trial, struck down a request from the FTX founder's lawyers asking that he be temporarily released from prison. Bankman -Fried has been held in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center since his bail was revoked in July, and his lawyers argued for the third time on Thursday that this has made it difficult for them to prepare for trial. With Bankman -Fried's trial set to begin next week, the argument from his lawyers this time around was that Bankman -Fried would need time to strategize during his trial. Previously, they'd asked he be granted release ahead of time. Kaplan again denied the motion arguing the FTX founder has had ample opportunity to review the evidence and prep his defense over the past several months. Kaplan did make some concessions, however, ordering the Department of Prisons to ensure Bankman -Fried be delivered to court at a brisk 7 a .m. on most days of the trial, designed to give him and his lawyers a bit of extra time to incorporate fresh testimony into their defense. Part of Kaplan's rationale for denying the release request came from his belief, as a seasoned jurist, that Bankman -Fried might present a flight risk. "'Your client could be looking at a very long sentence,' Kaplan told Bankman -Fried's lawyers. If things looked bleak and he had the opportunity, maybe he would seek to flee." On a housekeeping note, we officially have the court calendar for the trial through November 11. The court will meet four days a week except for the week of October 22, when it will only be in session two days.
Unchained
A highlight from Heres How Sam Bankman-Frieds High-Stakes Trial Could Play Out - Ep 549
"Even though each of these charges, if you look at the DOJ press release says, oh, it contains a maximum sentence of 20 years or five years, whatever, it's not going to be consecutive. It'll be concurrent. So the estimate I'm getting from various attorneys that I've spoken to over the past few weeks is it'll probably be somewhere in the, you know, 10 to 20 year range. Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the September 29th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Thinking of launching your own stable coin? Start with the open source stable coin studio toolkit on Hedera. Start your journey at Hedera .com slash Unchained. Shape tomorrow today. With the crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Arbitrum's leading layer two scaling solution offers you ultra cheap and lightning fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's guest is Nick Day, Coindesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation. Welcome, Nick. Thanks for having me. The trial for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman -Fried starts next Tuesday, October 3rd. There's been a lot happening pre -trial. For instance, Sam has requested release from jail multiple times and repeatedly been denied, including as recently as Thursday morning. My personal thought was that it seemed like all these requests that the defense was putting in at this critical juncture right before the trial was supposed to begin was maybe not the best use of their time, but that's just my personal opinion. I'm not a lawyer. Why do you think they made this such a point of focus in the last few days? Yeah, so I'm actually coming, you know, I was in the courthouse just a few hours ago where this very issue was brought up and the defense's arguments were, well, the first time we asked, it was for pre -trial release. You know, this was right after Bankman -Fried was remanded into custody in mid -August. The second time was, you know, they were asking the appeals court to overrule the judge's decision to remand him. And they lost that as well. In court today, the defense said, well, you know, now we want to ask for during trial, which is why we waited until this week to make that request. And they say that they want to, you know, the circumstances are different. They're not asking for Bankman -Fried to be released from jail in the weeks leading up to trial. Now they're saying, well, you know, during the trial, we're going to have to talk to him and check with him about defense witness testimony and cross -examination and things like that. So that's why we're making this request. And the judge didn't really find that compelling. And why do you think the judge has stuck to this position of keeping Bankman -Fried in jail? So in the judge's words, there's a couple of different reasons. One being that Bankman -Fried has had ample time to look at the defense materials. You know, one of the arguments was there are something like 1300 exhibits expected over the course of the trial. And the judge asked today, you know, were these all prepared and shared with you before, I think he said September 8th, so earlier this month. And the defense, they said, yes, we've seen all of this. We've had access to all of this. Bankman -Fried was out on bail for about seven and a half months. And so the judge's argument is, well, he's had time to look at this. You know, there's no surprises here. And he said that the defense has the chance to talk with Bankman -Fried in the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he's currently being housed weekends during days that there are no trials. So, you know, the trial is not every weekday. It's going to be most weekdays. And he said, you know, you have the time, you have the opportunity, you are able to talk to your client. You're not really losing a whole lot. But he added kind of a, you know, made this ruling where Bankman -Fried will even be presented to the courthouse early on trial days where there's certain witness testimony that has to be discussed and let the attorneys just talk to him before the trial begins on those days. So he's saying basically, you know, you have opportunities to talk to your client and I'm going to give you, you know, more time to do so, but I'm not going to let Bankman -Fried out of jail. So the main focus next week as the trial begins will be jury selection. Tell us what you think that process will be like. It definitely will be interesting. I think it's probably going to be very boring from just kind of an observer perspective because it's a long process and we're going to be just sitting there watching this judge ask each individual, you know, have you heard of FTX? Have you heard of Bankman -Fried? What do you think about cryptocurrencies? But it's going to be very interesting because this is the part where we're 12 or so people who are going to determine whether or not Bankman -Fried spends the next, you know, 10 to 20 years of his life behind bars. And so I'm expecting to see maybe as mixed selection. I think if you pluck a random group of New Yorkers off the streets, some of them may have heard of cryptocurrency, most of them probably will not have, and they're going to be tasked with deciding whether or not one of the biggest figures in crypto committed fraud on the way up and on the way down. Something that was interesting to me was the prosecution said that they expected jury selection to take the better part of a day. I've seen some legal opinions that it will take longer than that. What do you think could potentially happen there and why do you think some analysts are saying that it would take longer? Yeah, no, I've spoken to a number of lawyers as well ahead of the trial, you know, where at Coindes we're trying to do a lot of kind of preview coverage, basically saying here's how it might go down. Everyone I spoke to said it will probably take a couple of days. Part of that is because this is a fairly notorious case. A lot of people will have heard about Bankman Fried and presumably formed some kind of opinion that would, you know, disqualify them from being a juror on the trial. I'm not sure where the DOJ is getting their estimate from. It's very possible that, you know, through the questionnaires that the jury pool is sent through the, you know, the kind of the mass selection process or deselection process that the judge engages in, maybe that streamlines a big part of it by kind of, you know, reducing or like immediately filtering out the people who are most blatantly, you know, either knowledgeable or biased or otherwise have their own preformed viewpoints about the case. And so the jury selection might just be focused on, you know, those individuals who have made it through those initial filtering processes. But that's speculation on my part. I honestly am not sure if it is a better part of the day that we could see opening statements as soon as, you know, next Wednesday, October 4th, which would be a pretty rapid start to the trial. And Coindesk did some work to try to suss out what it is that lower Manhattan New Yorkers might say if they were randomly picked for a jury. What did you discover there? Yeah, no, so Coindesk's Dylan and Victor went to Manhattan, downtown Manhattan to the financial district, and literally just went up to people and said, hey, we're with Coindesk. Have you heard of FTX? Have you heard of Sam Bankman -Fried? And a fairly large part of this group just hadn't heard about it. You know, they weren't familiar with it. They weren't comfortable talking about crypto. They weren't familiar with crypto. And of those who were, you know, I think they found a fairly even mix. There were some individuals who had heard about Bankman -Fried, some individuals who had only heard about crypto, some individuals who were very knowledgeable. They actually found a, you know, a Yahoo anchor who was the most knowledgeable about it naturally as, you know, order covering the financial space. But they also found people who were looking for jobs in crypto, people who were investors in the space. By and large, it seems to, you know, a lot of the people they spoke to just weren't interested or talking, interested in talking about crypto or in, you know, being part of this, being part of crypto. So if that is a representative sample of who we'll see next week at the jury pool, it'll be interesting because we'll see a large, potentially large, jury pool of people who aren't familiar with crypto. Again, on one of the biggest, you know, bang in on one of the biggest figures in the space. Recently, the defense proposed certain questions that it would ask the jurors and the government said that they felt these were quote unquote intrusive. What were some of the questions that were proposed and what was the government's response? Yeah. So, you know, the background here is both the DOJ and the defense team filed their proposed jury questions to help filter potential jurors. The defense team in particular had a number of questions about, you know, how these potential jurors felt about things like effective altruism, about political donations, about ADHD and people who have ADHD. And the DOJ response was really, you know, they felt that some of these questions, for example, about effective altruism and about political donations seemed kind of primed to, or designed to prime the potential jurors to think, oh, well, Bankman Fried was trying to do all of this in service of this effective altruism philosophy. Therefore, he was trying to raise money to donate to better the world or designed to try and prime the jury to think, okay, well, you know, political donations is fine. So these allegations about breaking the law in the way he tried to donate funds maybe is, you know, overreach or whatever. And in the intrusive part, you know, treating just kind of this question of ADHD and whether or not people were, you know, involved with individuals who had it or the DOJ just felt that these questions were really designed to try and shape how the jury would see Bankman Fried as opposed to just kind of gauge their existing biases. And so the DOJ opposed these questions and I think we're still waiting to see for sure if there's any public response on the judge prior to jury selection on Tuesday. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about different legal strategies that the defense might pursue. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. 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Recently, the defense did propose a number of witnesses, but the judge denied most of them. Who were these proposed witnesses and why were they denied? Yeah, so the DOJ and defense both had a number of proposed expert witnesses. The defense in particular had a number of individuals that they said could speak to everything from the terms of service that FTX operated under to the FTX software to just rebutting certain DOJ witnesses. The judge basically said he agreed with the DOJ in rejecting all of these proposed witnesses. There were seven. He did allow the defense to call for four of them later on, but they have to meet certain requirements and fill out certain disclosure forms first. A big part of the judge's reasoning was the witnesses had just not adequately explained what they wanted to testify about or what they would say, and so they didn't have or he didn't have enough information to allow them to testify, which was functionally the DOJ's argument as well. That being said, some of these proposed witnesses are intended to act as rebuttal witnesses to DOJ's witnesses. I know we're saying the word witnesses a lot, but that's what it comes down to is four of these witnesses could come back and respond to, you know, either FTX intercircle members who are testifying on behalf of the DOJ. One of the potential witnesses that the defense can call forward is someone who can speak to the actual technical software underlying the, you know, FTX program, again, in response to DOJ witnesses. The judge did completely ban, for example, a British barrister who was supposed to explain the FTX terms of service as well as someone who was supposed to speak to kind of the crypto industry at large, saying that, you know, those witnesses and that proposed testimony seemed a bit too far afield from what the case would be about and could probably do more to confuse the jury than to clarify anything. And SPF's team also wanted to block a proposed government witness that was also denied. Who was that and why did the judge deny that motion? The DOJ proposed a University of Notre Dame professor to testify about some forensic analysis he did on FTX financials. The defense objected. They said that this witness would basically just reiterate the DOJ's claims, the allegations, but the DOJ argued that he was doing his own analysis of the data he had access to. And so it wouldn't just be stating the DOJ's claim. He would be providing his own expert insight based on his own work, you know, examining the databases that he had access to. And the judge agreed with that and said that based on what he'd saw and based on what the witness disclosure had provided, the witness was likely just speaking to his own expertise and looking at actual data as a third -party expert witness might do. And so those witnesses are allowed right now. We're still waiting on the full and final witness list, but we now know that there are probably at least a dozen witnesses that we're going to hear from over the next six weeks. And who are the ones that stick out to you on that list? I think the cooperating witnesses, so the FTX inner circle, that's former Alameda Research CEO Carolyn Ellison, former FTX director for engineering Nishat Singh and Gary Wang. I forget which one of them was the director of engineering. The other one was a fellow executive, but you know, these are the three individuals I think we're going to hear from probably first, maybe. Might hear from them as soon as next week, not certainly the week after. They're the ones who were in it, right? They were involved in this. They were part of FTX. They were part of the highs. I think we're going to probably hear from them, you know, how FTX might've fallen apart. I know from court filings, we know that DOJ wants to ask Carolyn Ellison about the FTT token and allegations that Sandbank and Freed was directly involved in trying to argue for Alameda to take a large sum of it and to potentially allegedly manipulate the price. So I think that testimony is going to be really interesting just because, again, it's the firsthand account of what happened. We're also probably going to see the defense try and discredit these witnesses to the extent possible, right? Straight out of the gate saying, well, you know, you weren't threatened with jail if you didn't testify in turn against your former boss. So I imagine we're just going to hear arguments like that from the defense during cross -examination, but either way, I think this is going to, you know, those are the three witnesses I think we're looking forward to most right now. And then once we're past that kind of initial surge of FTX insiders, that's when we'll get to kind of more, I don't because I don't think that is the right word for it, but, you know, people who are looking at it from kind of the, you know, again, forensic analysis perspective, people who are going to be able to kind of dig through and say, all right, well, you know, we've looked through the smoking remains and here's what we found. And I think that will also be interesting because it'll be really a third -party perspective on, you know, here's how this thing was set up and here's where things may have gone wrong or here's where things may have fallen apart. And getting a third -party perspective on that I think is going to be really fascinating because there'll be, I assume, a bit more objective about it than, you know, people who built it and worked on it maybe could be. One other kind of motion that happened this week that was pretty interesting or development, I should say, is that the judge did allow SPF's team to ask some of the witnesses about their drug use. What do you think will be the significance of that line of questioning? I think that goes back to, you know, a witness, cooperating FTX inner circle member saying, while we were at FTX, Sam directed us to manipulate FTT, whatever, you know, just speculating what someone could say. And the defense comes back and says, well, you know, are you sure that's what he said? Were you high at the time of these conversations or were you engaged in recreational drug use during the time you were running this company? You know, if I'm a member of the jury and I hear, okay, well, everyone was partying and on drugs and doing weird stuff or, you know, potentially, you know, in an altered state of mind, that might shape how I view the, you know, the defendant, the verdict, the whole case. So the judge did say that prior to making those, you know, kind of questions, the defense has to notify the prosecution and the judge about it. So it's not going to be a case of like they'll blindside the witnesses about this, but I imagine that's going to kind of go back to this effort to try and say like, okay, you know, Bankman Fried wasn't doing something wrong on his own or intentionally, it's just that things fell apart, but they were well -intentioned. The defense is going to attempt to, I think, pin some of the blame on legal advice that Bankman Fried received. How effective do you think that argument will be at trial? That's a really hard question to answer. I think the problem that the defense has is there's really no denying that FTX fell apart and it fell apart in like a very dramatic fashion, right? The day it filed for bankruptcy that evening, what, a couple hundred million dollars or tens of millions of dollars worth of crypto was stolen, I think. I forgot the exact amount, but you know, it was a pretty dramatic way to cap off what was already a chaotic week. So the problem the defense has is they can't say, well, FTX is fine. And so they're leaning on this advice of counsel defense. Their argument is going to be, you know, Bankman Fried was well -intentioned. He told his lawyers everything he wanted to do, and he did everything they told him to do. And so because it all fell apart, you can't really pin that on Bankman Fried. You have to look at the advice he was given and the information he was acting on. And so I guess part of the problem that the defense might have here is did they share or did Bankman Fried share everything he wanted to do with his attorneys? Did the attorneys have all the information and did he do exactly everything the way his attorneys told him to? And I don't know, you know, I'm sure we'll see answers to those questions over the next, you know, six weeks or so, but that seems to be kind of how that might play out. And it's going to be an interesting argument for sure. But again, I think it goes down to the central problem of FTX for sure collapsed and how you respond to that. One other issue is that the judge did rule that the prosecution could mention SPF's political donations. And there are charges specifically related to that that will be tried in a separate trial next year. So why were those allowed in this case? So this is where we get into what has become one of the new fun parts of being a court reporter in this case is Bahamas extradition treaties. So the original indictment that Bankman Fried was charged with back in December of 2022 did include campaign finance violations as one of the charges. But because it did not appear in the charging document that the Bahamas Police Department had, there's a Bahamas National Police, something like that, Bankman Fried's defense team successfully argued that they could not bring that charge right now because he had agreed to be extradited on the first seven charges, which were wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and bodies fraud, et cetera. So what it seems like is going to happen is the prosecution is going to try and fold all of that into all the political donation stuff into the other charges, into the wire fraud charges, and say, well, you know, we have the evidence, we have the allegations, and here's what you have to look at what that means for the next trial. And, you know, you're absolutely correct. There is another trial currently tentatively scheduled for either March or April 2024, next spring, either way, where we will be going through all of this again. But a lot of that is dependent on the Bahamas. And yeah, we could probably talk about that for another hour if you wanted to. All right. Well, we'll leave that for another episode. But one thing I did want to ask about is earlier in this interview, you said that his sentence was likely to be in the range of 10 to 20 years. And obviously, you know, there's many charges and we don't know which ones he'll be found guilty of and which ones he won't. But how are you coming up with that estimate? So yeah, I should definitely be more precise there. So I personally am not a lawyer or an expert in this. I have spoken to a number of lawyers about this. And what they said is, if you have a defendant who is found guilty, so these assumption here is that he is convicted on at least one of these charges. But if he's found guilty on even several of the charges, because all of the conduct is similar, because it's all kind of identical conduct at the core, a judge, when making a sentencing determination, will basically fold all the charges into each other, right? All the conduct. And so even though each of these charges, if you look at the DOJ, press release says, oh, it contains a maximum sentence of 20 years or five years, whatever. It's not going to be consecutive. It'll be concurrent. So the estimate I'm getting from various attorneys that I've spoken to over the past few weeks is probably be somewhere in the, you know, 10 to 20 year range. Some estimates came down as low as five years, some as many as 36 years. But they all seem to base that on just kind of the allegations, the charges themselves combined with the amount of money allegedly lost, which is more than 50 million, combined with the severity and all of that. Yeah. And so 50 million is sort of like some thresholds because I think it goes in levels of severity. Yeah. And the higher the number goes, the longer the sentence. However, that's the largest threshold, obviously. Yeah. I literally looked up the federal sentencing guidelines, which by the way, is a very confusing document. I did not understand it. So I asked someone else to explain it to me, but yeah, it's the different thresholds that you mentioned. And it starts with the, I think the thousands range and then just kind of escalates up and 50 million seems to have been the uppermost that they had. So it's 50 million plus. I think the allegation is something like 10 billion loss from FTX. So 10 billions, a hair more than 50 million. Just as many multiples. So that will probably be kind of the way they calculate it, probably. And again, this is dependent on if he's convicted on one or more charges and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Okay. Well, we will have to see how all that plays out. Thank you so much for explaining all of this on Unchained. Thanks for having me again. Always great to talk to you. Yes. Same here. Don't forget next up is the weekly news recap today presented by veteran crypto reporter and Columbia University night budget fellow, Michael Del Castillo. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Join over 80 million people using crypto .com. One of the easiest places to buy, trade and spend over 250 cryptocurrencies.
Bankless
A highlight from ROLLUP: Coinbase Crashes DC | Gary Grilled By Congress | Vitalik Deepfakes
"Miss Wagner is like, yo, MIT version of Gary was pro -blockchain, but SEC Gary is anti -blockchain. And then Richie Torres is like, yo, it's a Pokemon card of security? These people are listening to crypto Twitter. They are like, these are our things. The power of crypto Twitter is like getting into Congress. Well, it's because it's distilled logic. I mean, Bankless Nation, it is the last Friday of September. David, what time is it? It's the Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup Ryan where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, yet we persevere nonetheless into the frontier this week with a bunch of clips of Gary getting grilled. So everyone, everyone prepare for that one. If you're not listening to this with coffee, because it's too late in the day, well then you should get your popcorn, because that is what you will need. I mean, this is a catharsis, I think, for many of you in this episode. You'll enjoy this very much. Also, crypto was present in Washington this week. Yeah, Coinbase's stand with crypto day was held at Capitol Hill the same day that Gensler was giving testimony in front of Congress. Convenient. What about the timing of that? David, what else we got? After that, we'll talk about pudgy penguins in Walmart landing a huge deal, a ton of distribution for pudgy penguins, also with each toy purchase having an on -chain identity on ZKSync. So we'll talk about that. And then after, also not only are penguins getting identity, but citizens of Buenos Aires perhaps also getting some on -chain presence as well. We'll talk about that. And then, of course, we're going to do the PSA of deepfakes and phishing attacks that are out there. We got a Vitalik deepfake that we want to show you. It's pretty hilarious, but not if you believe it. Notable VC Fred Wilson got phished for 40 NFTs this week. So if Fred Wilson can get phished, so can you. We will talk about this and more. What else we got, Ryan? You know, the usual Bitcoin ETF stuff. ETH might be getting futures. There's a ton to talk about every week. This is a bullish week, I think. I'm declaring it such, David. It is a bullish week. And we got some green candles when we get to the markets. But before we get in, David, we got a message from our friends and sponsors over at Layer Zero. What do they want the folks at home to know? They want you to know that after a year, over a year of combined effort, Layer Zero and Google Cloud have announced their partnership, and they are ready to build the interoperable cross -chain apps of the future. What is Layer Zero? Of course, Layer Zero is a set of smart contracts that are deployed on every single chain. These smart contracts connect to each other. How do they connect to each other? Well, they need some Oracle service in the center to be the chatterboxes, the passing messages between all of the Layer Zero smart contracts across all of the 50 different chains. Google Cloud is that new default Oracle. That is the partnership that they have created. So there is a link in the show notes for you to go explore more if you're a builder who wants to build on Layer Zero. LayerZero .network is also the URL. Well, you know what I want to learn more about this week, David, is markets. Tell me about the old markets. I think, I think, I haven't looked at this yet, but I think we got some green on the week. We got some green, dude. Let's look at the Bitcoin charts first. What's Bitcoin showing us? Some single digit green. Look at that green right on the right. That's your dose of dopamine for this week. It's like, whoo, Bitcoin up 2%, whopping 2%. Started the week at 26 ,600, ending the week at, well, Thursday morning, if you call it the end of the week. It's not the end of the week. 27 ,150, up 2%. Ether price up a little bit more, starting the week at 1660, up 4 .5 % to the current price, excuse me, starting the week at 1560, ending the week at right around 1660, where we are right now. 1660. I mean, it's still low. That is a low price. We are getting excited about very little right now. Yeah. It's up such a small degree, you shouldn't even be excited about this. And yet we are. Yeah, we are. 4 .5 % on the week, I'll tell you. It's better than flat. When's the last time we had a double digit week, man? Double digit up or down? Up. I can't remember either, actually. We've been in the flatlands for so long. It's just like kind of a little bit of a bleed out all the way from 1900. Weren't we over 2000 a few weeks ago? Yeah, we have touched over 2000 in this bear market, but man, it certainly doesn't feel like it. Last time we were at 2K was July. In July, briefly. We weren't at 2K. Yeah, I can't remember July. Well, I was in the mountains. It's been downhill ever since I caught back for the mountains. Yeah, it really was. It's been all downhill since you guys. The only thing you can do, David, is go to the mountains. Bad things happen to Gary Gensler when you go to the mountains. Although, I guess nothing bad happened to him this week. Anyway, I'm skipping too far ahead. We'll have our Gary later in the episode. ETH, Bitcoin, up 2%. Total crypto market cap, $1 .11 trillion. Layer 2 scaling factor, touched 6 % this week, down to 5 .5%. Still at all -time highs. Layer 0. Wait, what touched 6 %? Excuse me, not 6%. Total value loss? 6x. 6x is what I meant. Oh, activity. That's what you like to look at. Yes, layer 2 activity touched 6x of Ethereum, but now it's at 5 .69. Nice. 60 transactions per second, 64 transactions per second. Yeah, that's where we get the 6x. We got more transactions per second left in this tank, I think. Oh, yeah. David, you want to talk about the general markets, like all the TradFi markets? You want to talk about macro really quick, because it's been super confusing to me. It's been super confusing. And then I read this tweet. We're also doing a macro show on Tuesday as well. So a macro show, so talking about the state of macro from a crypto person, so it's a crypto person who understands macro, so I'm really excited for that show. Are you a crypto person that understands macro, David? Do you understand macro? When I have a smarter macro person with me, then yes, I understand macro. My question to you is, does anybody really understand macro, particularly right now? Oh, you mean current snapshot? Definitely not. Yeah, all right. So here's the tweet. Current situation. One, stocks are falling like a recession is coming. Two, oil prices are rising like there's no recession in sight. That's contradictory. Three, interest rates are rising like we have 10 % inflation. Yes, they are. Four, gold is falling like inflation is gone. Five, housing prices are rising like rates are falling. And six, commercial real estate is falling like it's 2008. Nothing adds up here. That's the way I feel about macro right now. It's very confusing. There is a confusing set of signals going on, and it's not adding up in my head. What do you think about this? Yeah, they follow through, and they say it's beginning to feel like a pivot point in sentiment. I don't know if I'm about to say what I think they are meaning by this, but when there's a bunch of confusion, people, I think, brace for something, brace for clarity, and then whatever that clarity is will define sentiment. Where are we going? We don't know. As soon as we find out, we'll know how we feel about it. But we know it's going to be different from here. Different good or different bad? Those are the only two directions. Yeah, I guess that's the reductive take about it. But it's basically like we don't really know. That's why I'm very interested in doing this macro episode next week to see what the newest macro person kind of knows. I will say one thing, though. I think volatility is back on the menu. I think that's what this means. Because when the market doesn't know what direction it's going to go in, then it can kind of lurch in one direction or the other. So weird macro climate right now. On the back of stimulus, on the back of money printing, like what's going on here? And just to be clear about something, we've previously talked about stocks being at all time highs. That's been kind of the theme of the last two months, I would say. Well, so from looking at the SPY, you don't have the chart up, but it has declined by 7 % since July. So the SPY is down 7%, which is more. That goes to the first bullet point. Stocks are falling like a recession is coming up. I don't know. It's down 7%, just doesn't feel like a lot to me. Well, in the trade market, 7 % is a lot historically, but not recently. 7 % in the trade market is actually, that's just like, trade markets are also volatile. OK, well, we'll try to make sense of this, but let's get back to crypto. This is a negative report from JP Morgan, who said, Ethereum's activity post -Shanghai that was the last hard fork back in March, has been disappointing. JP Morgan calling Ethereum's progress disappointing. They've got some reasons for this. While the shift from proof of work to proof of stake meant that the energy consumption from Ethereum collapsed by 99%, the Ethereum supply is shrinking and staking rose sharply by 50 % since the Shanghai upgrade. While that happened, the increase in network activity has been rather disappointing. Ethereum's daily transactions, daily active addresses, and total value locked on DeFi protocols on the network have all experienced declines since the last hard fork. So JP Morgan, their analysts expressing some bearishness here over the last six months or so. Yes. I'm not mad, just disappointed with that activity. My response to that is, who the hell are you? JP Morgan doesn't know how to analyze these things. Well, I don't know. Ethereum post -Shanghai activity, it's just the broader crypto downturn. And also, they're just wrong, JP Morgan, he is wrong. They say layer twos have displayed mixed results. Well, no, TVL and economic activity on layer twos across the board are all up. I don't know where the hell they're getting their data from, but not only is their data wrong, but their analysis is poor. Well, let's go to the actual numbers, Stephen. Layer two beat provides a good source for value locked on layer twos. What are we looking at? At the 180 -day time frame, it's basically flat. It's marginally up, it's basically flat. It's a flat TVL, $10 .5 billion. Activity is up, it's up so much. It's unequivocally up by a lot. I'm disappointed in JP Morgan. Wow. Have you ever been not disappointed with JP Morgan, David? I'm generally disappointed by banking in general. Really? You should start a podcast called Bankless, David, about escaping your bank over time, slowly. I think Vance Spencer put that tweet in perspective as well. Actually, I don't think he was responding to that tweet in particular. But we are. We got some perspective here from Vance Spencer. This is Ethereum, if you chart it against some of the fastest growing tech companies in human history, companies like Alphabet was Google, of course, and Meta or Zoom or Microsoft, and how quickly, over time, it took them to surpass $10 billion in revenue. How long did it take them? It took Ethereum seven years. When charted against these other tech companies, there's only one that did that faster, and that is Google. Yeah. Ethereum really did all of its $10 billion of revenue inside of 2020 to 2023. I mean, so look at this line. It's just kind of like a slope line up. So I mean, doing pretty well, all things considered, JP Morgan. Not disappointing. I'm not disappointed by this. And I'm not disappointed. Also, long -term perspective, not disappointed in the price of ETH over the last seven years either. And we can keep going. Uniswap this week hit 300 million in swaps. 300 unique million trades, swaps, has happened on Uniswap. Uniswap was invented in 2019. 300 million swaps since 2019. Is that disappointing? Is that disappointing? I'm not disappointed by that in the slightest. I feel great about that. Maintain my disappointment about JP Morgan. You know, I think it's part of a broader crypto sentiment, and I've seen a lot of takes just in general in news, but even in financial analyst news like JP Morgan research, that sort of thing. It comes back down to this, David. Mainstream thinks that crypto is dead, again, like always. This always happens. And this is what makes this a buying opportunity, as with previous cycles. And when crypto 10x's the next cycle, don't let anybody tell you you didn't earn it. Because if you're buying here, when everyone is saying crypto is dead, it's never coming back. That they're disappointed. That's how you earn. It's so easy. The signals are just being laid at our feet right now. They really are. I tweeted something like that out, and somebody responded with this life cycle. What are we looking at here? Yeah, just like the cycle of the bull bear market. So in the top of the bull market, some crypto friend of you will tell you, a bankless listener, you're so lucky. I wish that I bought two. And then the crypto market will go down and be like, you're an idiot. I told you crypto was a scam. Yeah, so especially when they say the words disappointing, it's such an emotional word. It's kind of just playing into the readership. I don't know if JP Morgan is about that game. I mean, we're in the stage of the cycle where everyone thinks you're an idiot. And they told you it was a scam. And you can't talk about crypto at your family events or parties because you're just the crypto moron who knows nothing. And ha, ha, ha, SPF, FTX, that's so stupid. Scams, frauds, NFTs are such a joke. Well, granted, some of those things are actually true. Sure, sure. But if you're still in crypto and you know why you're here. And you're no longer buying the scams because you can identify them. And then you'll swing back to like, I am a genius. I am amazing. I am lucky. Or third parties will say you're lucky when that happens and you'll feel like a genius. You've been chewing glass for three years, but you know, you got lucky, though. You got lucky. How about the Bitcoin ETF, David? Here's a tweet from James Seyfert. What's this about? He just says that the SEC has come out super early and delayed the ARK Invest and 21 shares Bitcoin ETF filing. There wasn't a decision due until November 11th. And typically up until recently, the SEC has always gone up right up until the buzzer. But they decided to delay their decision on this earlier than usual. You know why? Partially? It's some speculation. It's because the government's about to shut down. The U .S. government's about to shut down. That's on Monday, right? On Monday? Yeah. So apparently if by Sunday night, this Sunday night, Congress doesn't reach some sort of compromise resolution, whatever agreement to keep the government running, then it shuts down yet again. I mean, how many times have we been through this? And so this is the SEC just getting ahead of that so that the stuff doesn't expire while the government shut down. And I guess, I don't know what would happen if the government shut down and these deadlines were missed. But maybe they would de facto be approved. I think that could be how it works. Is this some sort of pseudo oracle about how the SEC thinks that if we do go for a shutdown, we'll get shut down all the way until at least November 11th? I have no idea. I have no idea what this could mean. I do know this is good news. So Congress, both Democrats and Republican lawmakers, sent a letter to Gary Gensler pleading that he approve a spot Bitcoin ETF.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 683:Binance Exits Russia & SECs High-Stakes Terraform Probe
"Good evening, and welcome to The Crypto Overnight -er. I'm Nick Ademus, and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Thursday, September 28th, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight -er, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight, we're diving deep into the intersections of law and crypto. Whether it's Binance cutting ties with Russia, the SEC's ongoing tussle with Terraform Labs, or the courtroom drama unfolding around Sam Bankman -Fried, legal battles are shaping the landscape. But that's not all. Central banks are toying with DeFi, while PayPal is making strategic crypto alliances. It's a jam -packed night tonight, folks. Let's get started. Binance sold its entire Russian business to ComEx. This move comes as Binance faces mounting legal risks in Russia. ComEx is a newly -launched crypto exchange. It offers a wide range of products, including Spot, Futures, and P2P services. Binance's chief compliance officer, Noah Perlman, stated that operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy. He said they're focusing their energy on the 100 -plus other countries where they operate. Binance assured that all assets of existing Russian users are safe. The offboarding process may take up to a year. Binance will work with ComEx to migrate its assets. Unlike other international deals in Russia, Binance will have no ongoing revenue split from the sale, nor does it maintain any option to buy back shares in the business. Last month, Binance removed five sanctioned Russian lenders from its site. The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance was helping Russians move money abroad. This came after U .S. Justice Department investigations into whether Binance had been used by Russians to evade U .S. sanctions. Binance CEO, Chengpeng Zhao, took to Twitter to clarify some points. He said that ComEx does not service U .S. or EU users. They have IP address checks and KYC blocks in place, which was something that Binance asked for in the deal. CZ also clarified that he holds no shares in ComEx and didn't financially benefit from the deal. CZ also mentioned that some former Binance team members from the Commonwealth of the Independent States may transition to ComEx. He thinks that's a good thing. The sale of Binance's Russian unit to ComEx is a significant move. It speaks volumes about the regulatory landscape crypto businesses are navigating in. Binance's decision to exit Russia is a clear sign that the exchange is taking compliance seriously, especially in the face of U .S. sanctions and ongoing investigations. This could be seen as a strategic retreat to focus on markets where the regulatory environment is more favorable. CZ's denial of ownership in ComEx is noteworthy. It dispels rumors and adds a layer of transparency to the deal. The fact that ComEx will not service EU or U .S. users is also significant. It shows that the new exchange is taking a cautious approach to compliance, likely to avoid the pitfalls that Binance itself encountered. The offboarding process for existing Russian users will take up to a year, which raises questions about the logistics and security of such a transition. That's a long window that could be exploited if not managed carefully. The absence of an ongoing revenue split or a buyback option in the deal indicates that Binance is cutting ties with Russia in a very final manner. This isn't a temporary measure, but a calculated exit. It's clear that Binance is tightening its compliance strategy. They're exiting a market fraught with legal risks to focus on more compliant operations. Even giants like Binance have to play by some rules or at least know when to exit the game. All right, you've just heard about Binance's tactical exit from Russia, a development that cannot be ignored. Compliance is the new battlefield and it's reshaping the crypto world. But while Binance is navigating Russian law, let's pivot to U .S. shores where another legal battle is simmering. Make sure to hit that like button and subscribe to stay updated.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from A Dame Trade Deep Dive With Ben Thompson, Plus Seth Meyers and Million-Dollar Picks
"Coming up, Dame gets traded. Million dollar pick Seth Meyers, it's all next. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Get in on the football action right from the opening kickoff with America's number one sports book. The app is safe, secure, easy to use. FanDuel always has exclusive offers. When you win, you'll get paid instantly. FanDuel has lots of ways to play, like the spread, money line, over -unders, team totals, player props, so much more. Jump into the action at any time during the game with live betting. Combine multiple bets from the same game in a same game parlay. Download the FanDuel sports book app today. Make every moment more of this football season. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit TheRinger .com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of this episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit TheRinger .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. I just use this. Here's something every football fan should know. You can get everything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything because you can't get the dream flex for your fantasy team delivered with Uber Eats. But Tex -Mex, yeah, great pass protection, can't get it. Great pizza selection, oh yeah. While they can't help on the field, you can get pretty much everything else you need to watch the game delivered with Uber Eats. So this season, get anything, almost, almost anything for game day by ordering on the Uber Eats app. Uber Eats, official on -demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. I'll call in select markets and 21 plus to order. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did the big chill. It was very, very exciting. I have Kyle Brandt coming on Monday's podcast. I'm just gonna tell you the movie now because it is gonna be the best moment of your weekend if you spent two hours watching this classic. We're doing Toy Soldiers. It really brings everything possible to the table. So if you wanna watch it ahead of time, there it is. That podcast is going up Monday night. If you wanna hear stuff about the debate, we have Tara Paul and Mary's podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win. That reacted to it as well as the press box with Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. So there you go. Our debate coverage has been on point. Also, higher learning. Van and Rachel had Larry Elder on this weekend. It made a lot of noise, man. That podcast is great. I hope you check that out as well. Hope you're checking out theringer .com. And on this podcast, gonna talk about the dame trade at the top. We're gonna bring in Ben Thompson from the Techery newsletter, which he's been on this podcast I think four weeks ago. And he's a huge Bucks fan. He's gonna give the Bucks fan side of things. We're gonna do million dollar picks. And then old friend Seth Meyers talking about a whole bunch of stuff. So really good podcast. It's all next. First, our friends from Pro Jam. What's up? All right, I'm taping this on Thursday afternoon. Normally when there's a big MBA trade, I always do the emergency trade reaction right after the podcast. But we just put up a podcast on Tuesday. So I decided to play it a little differently this time. I wanted a little distance, I wanted to listen to stuff, read stuff, and try to form some big picture opinions coming out of this. So I have four smaller ones, then one big one. First one, I thought Portland did an incredible job with this trade. I really liked this trade, especially everyone was trying to bully them in June and July about, oh, you got to take Miami's offer. You just got to. It's where he wants to go. It's the only offer you're going to get. And guess what? They waited. They played it perfectly. They stared Miami down, and they got a much better deal. First of all, they get the Drew Holiday piece that they can flip into a bunch out of their stuff, which we'll talk about in one second. I love the DeAndre Ayton gamble. As you know, on this podcast, I am a big DeAndre Ayton guy. Not in the sense of I'm the biggest fan of his in the world, but I'm a fan of the asset. I just think I love the valued assets, no matter what it is. Whatever market we're talking about, DeAndre Ayton, 18 and 10 for his career, 60 % field goals percentage, 25 years old. He's played in 45 playoff games. He played four rounds in the 2021 finals. Last year, he got his ass kicked by Jokic. Oh, sorry. Like, that never happens. And Phoenix just sold on him, which I can't wait to talk about. But just from a Portland standpoint, they not only get Ayton in whatever they get for holiday, they get the 29 first, they get the two swaps, and they dump Nurkic. Nurkic hasn't had a healthy start to finish all the way through the playoffs here since 2018, which I'm positive was a long time ago. He's basically 12 and 8. He's, you know, a 50 % shooter. I made a list of the top 30 centers. I encourage you to do this at home, because what's more fun than making lists of NBA centers? I can't imagine anything. I made a list of who I thought were the best assets of the center position for talent, contract, everything. He was 29th on my list. The only person I had ahead of him who's technically a starter, unless you start talking about the Detroit or Charlotte guys, was Zubats on the Clippers. I thought he was the 29th best center asset in the league. And Phoenix, you know, just quickly to go to them, they're trying to win this year. They got worse. They turned Ayton's money into Nurkic and Grayson Allen and Nasir Little. Grayson Allen, we already know with him, he can't play in playoff series. We saw him 22. We saw it last year. I heard and read in some places like that, I got two rotation players. Did they? Is Nurkic a playoff rotation player? Is Grayson Allen a playoff rotation player? Because I'm positive he's not. So for the same money that they were spending on Ayton, they got three guys that I don't think are going to help them. In 25, the money comes down a little bit to 23 million just for Nurkic and Little, which is 7 million less than Ayton. And then in 26, that money goes up to 25 .5. But I don't understand what Phoenix was doing. Why not wait to see if Ayton clicks with Vogel? Vogel has such a good history with centers. He rejuvenated Dwight Howard on the 2020 Lakers. He basically created Roy Hibbert's career in 2013 with the defense verticality thing. I thought he was going to do a good job with Ayton. I'm stunned that they gave up on him. I'm almost waiting for one of those, now they tell us stories when, you know, that's where Brian Curtis calls them, where like a week after something happens, there's this kind of notebook dump where it's like, here's seven terrible DeAndre Ayton stories. So maybe that'll happen. But for Phoenix just to be like, cool, we locked this down, man. We got Nurkic. You're trying to win the title. You have KD and Booker and Beal. And like, what are you guys doing? Anyway, from Portland's standpoint, I love the Ayton thing. I love that they didn't get bullied. And I know they're going to turn Drew Holliday into something. So this to me was at least an A minus for them, for where they were two months ago, where Dave's like, I want to go to Miami. That's it. And if you don't trade me there, that's kind of fucked up. And they made this work as it got reported that, uh, I think in the athletic, that he expanded his list to Brooklyn and to Milwaukee in the last two weeks. And that's what Portland was waiting on. You know, they were banking on the fact that he's a competitive dude. He's one of the best 75 pairs ever. He wanted a situation settled. So, you know, you wait, you wait, you wait, they expand the list and then you go. Uh, there's a Drew Holliday piece to this. That's awesome. He becomes a contender prize. I wouldn't call this a Drew Holliday sweepstakes. I reserved sweepstakes for the superstars, but it's a mini sweepstakes. This is somebody that could have a huge impact on the playoff race. You know, not only the usual suspects, everybody's talking about Boston, ironically, Miami is a really good fit for him. And in some ways, um, I'm a little more scared of them with Miami than Dame in some ways, especially at a much cheaper contract with giving up less and keeping some of their assets. Philly, if they could pull it off, they have to be in there in Golden State, Minnesota. I think I have to mention Sacramento, I think is a team that if they could figure out how to get Drew without giving up their core, which is basically Keegan Murray and Sabonis and Fox, like that's, you know, could Davion Mitchell be in that trade with some, with a salary and some picks, who knows. The team that I love for Drew Holliday is OKC. I have OKC, you know, I started doing my MBA research for the over -under spot and I haven't landed on a number for them yet, but to me, they feel like a high forties team with Chet and with the growth of their young guys. And if you just like, let's say they traded Lou Dort and a bunch of their picks, maybe two firsts and two of their lesser picks or three firsts and a second, whatever it is. And they just say, fuck it. And they get Drew and you put him with Giddy and SGA and Jalen fucking awesome Williams and Chet Holmgren and all these other dudes they have, that might be a top three team in the West. I mean, that, that's starting to give me some early 2010s OKC vibes. So where he goes is going to be important. I just feel like there was so much Drew Holliday slander the last couple of days. You know, he's one of my favorite players. Even Haralabob, who was the chairman of the board of the Drew Holliday fan club for years and would have the benefit dinners there and, you know, just did a lot of yeoman's work on that front. And even he was like, yeah, yeah, Dame's better than Drew. That trade makes sense for Milwaukee. I was hurt, Haralabob. I was 100 % hurt by that. But you know, Drew got his ass kicked by Jimmy Butler in the playoffs last year. I get it. It happens. Jimmy was unbelievable. I feel like he would have kicked anybody's ass. By the way, why is Drew Holliday guarding Jimmy Butler? That speaks more to some of the issues with Milwaukee. He was never supposed to be a point guard and a creator. I think he was always better as an off -the -ball guy. We saw that with Rondo and New Orleans and just in general. I want to see him with a point guard. I want to see him just being unleashed, not having the ball a lot, just worrying about hitting threes, being an occasional, you know, make -shit -happen guy and being like the third or fourth best guy on a team without having the offensive responsibility to have. All their half court issues got blamed on him for the last couple of years. And I get it. They weren't like an awesome half -court team, even the other one in the finals, but I really value that dude. I had him, even I did the trade value list in August and I had him 37th and I had Dame 23rd. I think he's one of the best 30 players in the league still. He's 33 years old, which, you know, I'm going to talk in a second about when guards hit their mid -30s, but just in general, I think he's a real asset. If he goes to a team like the Celtics and they can keep Derek White and Tatum and Brown in the center, it's like, look out, man. So little mini sweepstakes, rarely do we get the trade, but then we still get another asset to talk about. Thank you for everyone involved in the trade. And then the fourth small point is just that, you know, not rocket science, Milwaukee bought some Giannis time here. They have one of the best 20 players of all time. They were staring down the barrel of a situation that was not good. I was talking about it on this podcast in late June and early July. I thought he was going to put them on the clock. I thought Mark Lasry selling his stake was a really bad sign for all of this because that dude is smart. As I laid out in June, that guy is really smart. And if he's feeling like, you know what, it's time for me to sell my buck stock, that makes me nervous. And then all the stuff that Giannis said and did, which I thought he did really fairly and really smartly. And I think that dude's about titles and that's it. And I know we say that about players, but I think in his case, I don't think he cares about, you know, what's my legacy, how do I compare against Dirk DeWhisky, any of that stuff. I just think he wants more rings. I mean, think about the guys who have won two rings out of the best 35 guys on my list of my pyramid. Those are all guys in my top 35 that won multiple wings. You go to the one -ring side, Jerry West, Oscar, Moses, Dirk, Jokic, Giannis, Pettit, Garnett, Kawhi, Rick Barry. That's the list he's on now. I certainly don't think he's looking at that list going, I got to get away from these guys, but it's a slightly different list. I think when you win multiple rings in multiple situations, it elevates you in a certain way. I think he fundamentally understands that at least a little bit. I want to be the best player since LeBron James. I think that's a thing that he wants. How am I going to do that? I need more rings. I need more finals trips. He knew from last year and maybe even the Boston series that they just weren't good enough. Whether this trade is going to be the thing that propels them, we'll find out, but he's been in the league 10 years, two MVPs, five first teams, two second teams, and now we have this little two -year window. Kawhi and the Raptors was a one -year window. This is a two -year window, I feel like. With Giannis, he's got two years left in his deals. So does Lopez. Middleton has two in a player option. Dame's got two, and then this crazy $120 million player option extension thingy that he has that just keeps going and going. It's probably two years. There's a world where this could go terribly this season, at least for what the expectations are, and then maybe it becomes Kawhi, Raptors. Maybe Giannis is like, you know what? That didn't work. Trade me. And the Bucks, who have no picks left and no future, they look at it next summer, and they go, all right. We tried it. Giannis, what can we get for you? Dame, what can we get? And they just do a reboot, rehaul. Remember, they won in 2021, which just takes so much pressure out of this. It's so much different than the Clippers situation, where they went all in on Kawhi and Paul George. They give up all those picks and SGA, and they've gotten nothing out of it. They haven't even made the finals. So it's got to happen. I think they at least probably have to make the finals. If they get bounced in round two, do I think Giannis is going to stay because they made this Dame -Mower trade? Probably not. So that leads to the big question, is how good of a trade was this? So there's a big picture angle on Dame, and it's going to sound negative, but I really don't want it to sound negative because I think Dame, I voted for him for NBA Top 75. I think he's been one of the best guards in the last 15 years. I think there's a ton of great things you can say, and there's a chance that he goes to Milwaukee, and this thing is fucking awesome. I know any Celtic fan I've talked to, including Isaiah, who's helping produce this podcast today, the Giannis -Dame pick and roll is just terrifying. Other than Jokic and Murray, it's going to be the single most unstoppable offensive play in the league. It is. We are conceding that point. The spot Dame is in right now, big picture -wise, it's weird. He's a superstar, but he's not, and we've seen guys like this before. I judge superstars by, do you have the resume statistically, and is your team succeeding consistently at a certain level? You can't totally say that about Dame. He's never been on a 55 -win team. He's missed the playoffs completely four times in 11 years. He said three first -round exits. He made the Final Four once in 2019, which was really lucky because Golden State and Houston were the two best teams, and then they got smoked. He's never been on a true contender ever. Instinctively, you go, well, that's not his fault. Who's he played with? Well, he played with LaMarcus Aldridge and CJ McCollum and a couple other guys, but not really anybody. The reason I'm putting this up is there's a success element that he has not had yet that for somebody with his resume is actually kind of unusual. I went and I looked up how many guards in the history of the league averaged 22 points a game for their career and played at least 700 games. I thought the list would be like 20. I didn't know. I didn't know what I was walking into. Only I think 75 guys have averaged 22 a game. So I went and I looked up the list, and it was 10 guys, 700 games, 22 a game for their career. There were some guys who came close like David Thompson, who I think is one of the best guards I've seen in the last 45 years, but had a short career and had some drug issues. He didn't make it. He didn't play enough games. Pete Maravich, 24 .2 points a game, but he didn't play enough games. Kyrie hasn't played enough games yet. Bradley Beale is five games away. I'm actually kind of glad the cutoff's at 700 so we don't have to talk about him. And then Mitchell and Trey Young aren't there yet. There's only 10 guys that made it, and the 10 guys are all fucking awesome. And again, I mentioned this in the context of Dame, who we think he is versus the success he's had. So the 10 guys, Michael Jordan, 30 .1, Jerry West, 27 .1, Allen Averson, 26 .7, George Gervin, 26 .2, Oscar Robertson, 25 .7, Kobe, 25 .0, Harden, 24 .7, Curry, 24 .6, Wade, 22, barely made it, and Russ, 22 .4, and then Dame is at 25 again. All right, what does he not have that those other guys have? Well, MJ, don't need to talk about him. Don't need to talk about Jerry West, who's the freaking logo. Allen Averson, pretty good comparison, right? Big stats, really memorable player, but not a ton of success. Here's the difference. Averson made the finals once. He won an MVP. Dame has done neither of those things. George Gervin was the best scoring guard of the 70s. He made two final fours. He had some bad luck. He really, in 79, really should have came close. And some of it's on him, right? He could have come through. Bobby Dandridge is the one that ended up coming through for the Bullets. They lose. But two final fours, he had four top five MVP finishes, five first teams, four second teams. He was just unassailably the best guard in the league until MJ. Oscar Robertson, don't need to go through him, but he won a ring and an MVP. Kobe, five rings and an MVP. Eleven first teams for Kobe, by the way. James Harden, three final fours, an MVP, six top five MVP finishes, six first team MBAs. And even though Harden has never made the finals as the best guy, he made it with OKC as the sixth man, you could build a contender around Harden. We saw it. We haven't really seen it with Dame. I think that's a fair thing to bring up. Curry, four rings, two MVPs, you know, the Curry thing. Dwayne Wade, three rings, two top five MVPs, two first teams, three second teams. He's more in the Dame waters a little bit, but he had the 2006 finals and he was the second best guy with LeBron on those heat teams. And then Westbrook, who you would say, well, Dame had a better career than Westbrook. Did he? Westbrook made the finals in 2012. He was second best guy on that team. Almost made the finals in 2016. He won an MVP. He had two first teams and five second teams. It's at least like a real argument. And I think when you look at Dame, he only had that one 2019 round three, got bounced. He's only had one top five MVP finish. He's only had one first team MBA and four second team MBAs. Really, really good top 75 career. But the piece that's missing is, have you been on a really good team? Have you made a real run at it? Which is why, you know, I think this Milwaukee trade is so much fun. This is his real chance. I get nervous about a couple things with this trade. One is that, you know, if you look at the 33 and older guards who average 22 points a game in a season. Jordan did it twice. Curry did it twice. Still going. Kobe did it three times. Jerry West twice. Sam Jones once. Hal Greer once. That's the entire list. Now the NBA is different. We have more three -pointers now. It's easier to score. Scoring is the easiest it's ever been. Guys can play at a longer age. So I'm not ruling out Dane being good for the next three years. But just pointing out, history is saying, be a little nervous. In general with guards, like Chris Paul, we saw from age 35 to 36 to 37, like it just dropped. But that's two years older than Dane. Maybe it's fine. I just worry about guards. We have not a lot of instances with guards in their mid -30s of them either peaking as players or being able to sustain whatever success they had during their prime. It always starts to go down with really no exceptions, except for Steph Curry. He's the only non -exception. So if your case is Dane's as good as Steph Curry, or Dane can be as potent as Steph Curry on a winning team, like, you know, Steph Curry is better than Dane, but I'm not going to argue that he couldn't do a lot of the stuff that Curry did in Golden State. The bigger issue for me, the age I'm definitely worried about. Dane has not been healthy the last couple of years, and we have not seen him play nine straight months at playoff basketball with a big bullseye on his back. Everybody coming after you, you're the best team. We haven't seen him do that ever, much less than the last couple of seasons. So can he stay up? Can he stay healthy? That's one thing. The defense with Dane just got kind of swept under the rug the last couple days, and I don't really understand it because there's five categories of defensive player I feel like. There's excellent, there's good, there's average, there's not so good, and then there's bad. And I think Dane's a bad defender. I think the stats back it up. Like, his defensive rating last year was 245 out of the guards. He's the 245th guard for defensive rating. You know, 117 .4 individual defensive rating is 483 overall. Portland's team's always defensively, it was the Achilles heel for them. Partly because of Dane, because he couldn't guard anybody. He's too small. And, you know, think about what we saw from the playoffs the last couple years. I think about the 2020 bubble Celtics playoffs, not infrequently, because I think that team had a chance to potentially win a title. What happened? Everyone hunted Kemba Walker. It was hunting season. It's like, where is he? Got to get a switch. Got to get Kemba Walker guarding somebody who's bigger, or got to beat him off the dribble, and it just became a hunt session with him. And basically, he got played out of the league. He's not in the league anymore. You know, we had this with Isaiah Thomas, too, in the mid -2010s. I think it's been an issue with Kyrie Irving. The Celtics certainly went at him in the playoff series with Brooklyn a couple years ago. Curry, you saw, who I think is a better defender than people give him credit for, but the And he's a much better defender than Dame is. Jordan Poole is somebody that got hunted in playoff series recently. Chris Paul, obviously, is a big one. Jalen Brunson, remember what the Heat did to him? Mitchell, when he was on Utah, this was a huge issue. And then Trae Young, obviously. My fear with Dame is he's a DH, and I think in Portland, part of the reasons he was able to put up the stats he did was because he wasn't playing defense, right? It was just, how many points can I score? My team isn't very good, and I'm just going to do my thing. He's an incredible offensive player. But how much of a trade -off is the defense, right? Well, you think, all right, well, Milwaukee, they're really good defensively. They'll be able to protect him. Here's the team. Giannis, Dame, Lopez, Portis, Middleton, Conaton, Beauchamp, Crowder. Who's guarding Trae Young on this team? Who's guarding Jason Tatum? Here's a partial list of guys that I don't think this team will be able to guard this season. Devin Booker, Tatum, Butler, Trae Young, Kyrie, Curry. Who's going to be chasing Curry around the screens? Dame lowered? Good luck. SGA, Luca, Mitchell, Murray, Edwards, Brunson, Ja, Garland, Fox, Halburn. Are they going to be able to cover Derek White? I don't know. The way this team is constructed, they are not going to have the ability to guard other guards at all, which means they're just going to have to be in a shooting match with them, right? It's going to be not much different than what's going to happen with Phoenix, where they're just literally going to have to outscore the other team. I've just watched too much playoff basketball over the last couple years, where it's like, if you have that weak link on defense, and you're playing a team that's smart enough, they're going to go after that weak link. Like, think about them against the Lakers, right? The Lakers figure their crunch time. Let's say they make the finals. It's Milwaukee and the Lakers, and Lakers crunch time. They're going to have LeBron and Davis and Austin Reeves and, I don't know, a shooter and a point guard, whatever. All they're going to be doing is trying to find where Dame is on the court and going after him. What about when they play Boston? Boston puts out White and Brogdon and Tatum and Brown and a center, and all they're going to be doing is trying to make sure Dame is covering somebody who has the ball who's now torturing him. I think it's a real problem for them. And what's funny is they gave up Drew's defense and, you know, they, what they gave up on defense, which is significant, and they gained an offense, it might end up just being a wash and they might just be a different version of the same team where they still have a huge flaw. It's just on the other end of the court. I'm just shocked that nobody brought up the defense. I agree he's an amazing offensive player and what's cool about this trade and what I'm excited about as a basketball fan is, can he go up a level? Right? A lot of these stats he put up, especially the last couple years. They didn't mean anything. They were, he was on bad teams. Like, who cares? Ultimately, Bradley Beal scored 30 points a game on the Wizards. Who cares? I think most really good offensive players, if they're on a bad team, can get between 25 and 30 a night. Can you do it nine months in a row? Can you do it when you're getting hunted on defense all over the place? How much can Milwaukee protect him? And what does he have in the tank at age 33 with 900 plus games on the O 'Dominor already? I'm still afraid of the Bucks, but people have, like, FanDuel had them as best odds in basketball and I think most people feel like they're the favorite now. I don't feel like there's a favorite. I think you can go through every team. Boston, I could, I'm scared of Porzingis. What's going to happen with Jalen Brown out there? He has contracts. Can Peyton Pritchard, all these different things. Philly, God only knows. Miami, they're unquestionably worse. Yeah, Milwaukee is going to be really good, but depending where Holiday lands and how this all plays out, I just think it's still wide open. And the other piece, so if you're just talking Boston, Miami, Tatum kills Milwaukee. I have no idea why. Boston is kind of built to at least stay with Dame and, you know, Derek White is about as good of a person you're going to have to try to keep Dame in check, at least. And Boston's done a really good job of guarding Giannis over the years. They don't have Grant Williams this year, but I just don't think, I think there's as many ways this goes wrong as it goes right, I guess would be my final thought on this because for what they gave up, especially with that 29 unprotected and the two swaps and, you know, they are all in on this team. And you know my theory, when you go all in on a team, you better think you can win. Not positive, but it's an awesome trade. It really is. It makes the league so much more fun. Dame and Giannis together. I'm going to enjoy watching Portland. I still have my eating stock. Watching Phoenix fans slowly realize that Derkiszna isn't the answer is going to be fun and then we'll see where Drew Holliday goes. So really fun trade. We're going to talk about it a little bit more with Die Hard Bucks fan, Ben Thompson in one second. Let's take a break.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Congressional Republicans Lash Out At Gensler
"And at the end of it all, after dealing with several more non -answers from Gensler, an exasperated ogles closed the hearing with the call to open up the floodgates, hit him with subpoenas, get the information we need. The obfuscation, the not answering questions, I'm sick and tired of it. Dude, you wear tap dancing shoes better than Fred Astaire and enough is enough. It's time that questions are answered and that we have the information that we need. 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 Thursday, September 28th, and today we are talking about Gensler's combative hearing. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on The Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, we had yesterday another hearing featuring SEC Chair Gary Gensler. This was a House Financial Services Committee oversight hearing. And what makes this one a little bit more interesting, even in the Senate hearing that we heard last week, is one, it had some interesting lead -in in the fact that a bipartisan group had just sent Gary Gensler a letter encouraging him, in the strongest possible language, to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. And two, it had the setup for some very interesting fireworks heading in. And indeed, that is exactly what we got. Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry set the agenda from the beginning with his opening remarks. He addressed Gensler saying, Last time you were before the committee, I voiced my concerns regarding your reckless approach to rulemaking, lack of capital formation agenda, crusade against the digital asset ecosystem, and unresponsiveness to Congress. So many things changed, so many things remain the same. Those are the same issues on the docket today. McHenry went on to accuse Gensler of doing nothing over the past five months to remedy the legitimate and often bipartisan concern expressed by this committee, adding that this is disgraceful and that their patience was wearing thin. Now, the Republican critique of Gensler's rulemaking agenda is that a huge number of rules have been proposed during his term without an economic analysis being performed on their cumulative effect. Regarding the crypto crackdown, McHenry rebuffed Gensler's constant assertion that the law is clear. He stated, your actions have created more confusion and lasting damage. Indeed, he said that contrary to the SEC's role of consumer protection, that Gensler's actions had, quote, pushed legitimate digital asset activities outside of regulated financial institutions where consumers are best protected. Keep in mind, this is all in the opening statements. McHenry went on noting that the SEC's regulation by enforcement agenda has been ineffective and has been on a massive losing streak in the courts. Still, the main point, the main thrust of McHenry's opening, was that it was unacceptable that the SEC had not engaged with Congress. Wrapping it up, McHenry said, the SEC is not above the law, nor is it unique. I do not want to be the first chairman of this committee to issue a subpoena to the SEC, and you should not want to be the first SEC chair to receive a congressional subpoena. Either we find a path forward where the SEC recognizes Congress as a co -equal branch of government and is responsive to our oversight duties, or my option is to issue that subpoena. It's time for you to consider the lasting consequences of your actions and what that means to the SEC's reputation long -term. While your time in this role may be temporary, the repercussions for your actions may be permanent for the agency. It was a fierce opening that sent the signal right away of what we were in store for. Now, a couple other quick notes around other opening statements. Democrat Ranking Member Maxine Waters used her time to rail against MAGA Republicans for pushing the government into a shutdown, and effectively defended the SEC's agenda on all fronts, and asserted that their rulemaking agenda was moving quote thoughtfully and effectively. Now, Gensler himself also got a chance to give an opening statement, and most of his time was spent on justifying the agency's regulatory agenda. He claimed overall that the rulemaking process had been measured with ample time and consideration given to public comment. Now, from there we moved into the question section of the hearing. McHenry as committee chair got to go first and used his questions to focus on Bitcoin. He asked Gensler whether he stood by his previous comments that Bitcoin is not a security, which Gensler evaded by talking in circles, never reaching a point. Notably frustrated by this process, McHenry snapped, I'm asking you to answer my question now. This is not supposed to be hard. Unable to get a straight answer, McHenry moved on to his point that there is currently no regulator with authority over Bitcoin's spot markets. He asked whether Gensler believed legislation should be passed to close that regulatory gap. To the surprise of no one, Gensler continued in his noncommittal manner, acknowledging the existence of said gap but failing to engage with the need for legislation. After that, McHenry left the crypto topic to press Gensler about when he can expect a response to document requests. Becoming ever more frustrated with Gensler's mealy -mouthed answers, McHenry said, This should not be the hard work of a chairman. You have 30 major rulemakings, but you won't even provide basic documents to us. Your unresponsiveness is non -compliance and we'll have to take action if you're not willing to comply. Now Maxine waters again as ranking minority member got to speak next. She, too, continued on the crypto theme, although she used her time to accuse the industry writ large of quote gross violations of the law that end in investors getting ripped off. She asked Gensler what the SEC has done to quote shut down crypto firms and whether quote crypto firms are getting the message. This, of course, mainly served to set up Gensler's usual sound bites. This is a field, he said, that's rife with fraud, manipulation and scams, and the American public is still getting hurt by the non -compliance in this field. Waters also used this chance to castigate Republicans who quote too often protect crypto firms. Now it was very clear listening to Waters that she wants the public to see the crypto industry as just Luna and FTX, to extrapolate them to everything and effectively shut the industry down. Now moving into the rest of the questioning, much of the substantive discussion centered on SEC staff accounting bulletin 121. Better known as SAB 121, this measure requires financial institutions to place intangible assets on their own balance sheet rather than in segregated customer accounts. The rule has been widely criticized for making crypto custody essentially unworkable for banks. Dissatisfaction was expressed from numerous representatives, including one of Gensler's usual allies, Brad Sherman. Sherman noted that the rule lumps all intangible assets together from real estate to crypto. He suggested that specifically designed rules for vastly different asset classes would be more appropriate. The most robust questioning on this topic, however, came from Republican Mike Flood. Flood put to Gensler that his staff did not consult with prudential regulators on SAB 121, which Gensler acknowledged. After stating that he had personally looked into this issue, Flood noted that the Accounting Standards Board had not published any guidance around crypto custody. This contradicted Gensler's comments from a previous hearing when he stated that the SEC was simply applying existing accounting rules. Flood said quote, With regard to SAB 121's potential effects on a bank's balance sheet, it's fair to say that fact pattern we have is that the SEC is not just going out of its lane, but it failed to comprehend the existence of any conflict with prudential rules. He suggested that there are only two explanations for this action. Either the SEC knew there was no justification for SAB 121 and chose to do it anyway, or that there were fairly obvious mistakes made during that process. Flood concluded saying quote, The case of SAB 121 raises the question of whether the SEC is compromised. Now, as you might expect, minority whip Tom Emmer lined up to take his shot with a series of rapid -fire yes or no questions. The main thrust of his questioning was around whether Gensler's history as a partner at Goldman Sachs had colored his agenda at the SEC. To get a sense of Emmer's opinion on this, just look at his tweet from yesterday where he said, Fact, Gary Gensler is not an impartial regulator, and his answers to my questions today prove just that. He's made a career of being relentlessly loyal to the largest institutions in America at the clear expense of innovation, competition, and everyday Americans. One example, Emmer presented Gensler with a quote he previously gave about bank executives being concerned about depositors moving money into crypto. Emmer asked, Can you assure this committee that your style of regulation by harassment towards digital asset innovation is to the benefit of every American and not driven by your desire to protect industry incumbents? At another point, Emmer asked whether Gensler believed that all crypto tokens were securities, which was, once again, avoided with a rambling noncommittal answer. And all of this built up to the big finale in which Emmer said, Mr. Gensler, despite your years of rhetoric, I'm convinced you are not an impartial regulator. Instead, it's clear you are working to consolidate your own power even though it means crushing opportunities for everyday Americans and, frankly, the financial future of this country. Even the federal courts are highlighting the damage you, sir, are doing to our constituents and they are telling you you don't have the legal authority to accomplish your goal of squashing competition in the financial markets. Now, while this was extremely satisfying to watch if you happen to agree with Emmer, in general, I find that this type of interaction is exactly why these hearings are so much about and not really about productive anything. This was a chance to articulate the Republican position against Gary Gensler. There's no real place for listening. It's about laying out a narrative. Now, in this case, I happen to agree with Emmer's narrative, but it still doesn't make for the most effective governance. Another notable line of questioning came from Democrat Richie Torres. Torres used his time to dig into the issue of whether crypto should be governed by securities law. He said, I worry that the term investment contract has become so infinitely malleable and I worry that when it comes to crypto, your interpretation of the term investment contract has no limiting principle and therefore could invite arbitrary and capricious enforcement action. Torres referenced an August report from six law professors which examined the history of the Howey test. That report had noted that no Supreme Court ruling has ever determined the existence of an investment contract scheme without recognizing one or more contracts underlying that scheme. When pushed to provide a case that contradicts this research, Gensler was unable to do so. When Gensler began to waffle, Torres cut him off, stating that, This is a question to which you should know the answer because the definition of an investment contract is the central issue. That's what determines the extent of your authority. That's what determines the applicability of federal securities law to crypto transactions. Your inability to answer that question is baffling to me. Switching tactics, Torres asked whether purchasing a Pokémon card would constitute a securities transaction. Gensler, as always, was unable to give a straight answer, stating that he would know what the context was, although generally he acknowledged that it would not be. Torres followed up by asking whether purchasing a tokenized Pokémon card would be considered a securities transaction. He asked Gensler if, For you, the process of tokenization is what transforms a non -securities transaction into a securities transaction? Gensler, of course, did not get to a real answer and just fell back on restating the elements of the Howey test. One other topic that you might be wondering if it came up was the Prometheum question. Prometheum was, of course, the first crypto firm to obtain SEC registration as a crypto brokerage, despite the fact that that licensing seems to give them no ability to actually offer digital asset trading. Prometheum is also minority -owned by a prominent Chinese firm. After Gensler failed to express any serious concern with the Prometheum situation, Congressman Ralph Norman noted that the SEC had taken 10 weeks to respond to a letter on the issue. He said, Andy Ogles brought the four -hour hearing full circle, saying, And at the end of it all, after dealing with several more non -answers from Gensler, an exasperated Ogles closed the hearing with the call to, So, what can be drawn from this hearing, if anything? Well, Gensler appears to be stubbornly sticking to his plan to evade document requests and oversight from Republican representatives. Over the four -hour hearing, there were few, if any, answers from Gensler that produced any new information or even, frankly, attempted good -faith engagement with the questions. Throughout the hearing, Gensler acted as if he knew there would be no serious repercussions and he could continue to treat congressional oversight as a joke. Republicans, for their part, are clearly fed up and ready to act. McHenry began and ended the hearing with a threat to subpoena the SEC and Gensler to compel a response to the numerous document requests that have gone unanswered. The threat seemed to carry little weight for Gensler, who seemed more than willing to allow that controversial action to play out. Now, on the flip side, establishment Democrats appear entirely disengaged with the legislative process and committed to the current strategy of naming failed crypto projects and demanding that the SEC continue its rampage throughout the industry. No senior Democrats appear at all concerned that the SEC is losing in court, as long as that litigation remains a roadblock for the industry. Representative Torres remained a bright spot and one of the few Democrats breaking with his senior colleagues. His questions showed a deep understanding of the legal issues surrounding token lawsuits and the need for additional clarity and crypto regulation. Overall, the hearing really just confirmed what we already knew about Gensler and his leadership of the SEC, which is, of course, that it seems very unlikely that anything will change. However, Republicans have now clearly reached the end of their rope and are ready to play hardball by using subpoena power. As Bill Huizenga put it to Gensler, what's your plan? Because we've got a plan. Until next time, guys, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from SEC GARY GENSLER DELAYS BLACKROCK BITCOIN ETF, ETH FUTURES ETF APPROVED, RIPPLE FORTRESS, PAYPAL CRYPTO PATENTS
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to start off with big news from the SEC. They have delayed a bunch of Bitcoin spot ETF applications, and the applications includes BlackRock's, Bitwise and some others. So not denials, but delays. So corrupt scumbag regulator Gary Gensler continues his clown show. We know he has approved futures ETFs, and in fact, we got news that Valkyrie got their approval for an Ethereum futures ETF. So why is he approving these futures ETFs without hesitation? Because, folks, they can be used to manipulate the market and drive the price down, right? It allows for folks to short the market. And that's why a Bitcoin futures ETF was approved, multiple Bitcoin futures ETF were approved over the years. And yet the SEC kept denying spot ETF approvals. And we know in the Grayscale lawsuit, the three judges said the SEC was arbitrary and Bitcoin spot ETF. So we have to keep putting the pressure. Again, we have a delay here and I think we can expect more delays, right? Until Gary starts feeling the pressure and we saw members of Congress send letters to Gary asking him to approve the Bitcoin spot ETF and highlighting the Grayscale lawsuit. So I think eventually the pressure will be on him where he's going to have to do this. And in one way, in one way, this is a good thing that it's not getting approved now, because in my opinion, I believe the Fed is going to continue to raise rates till the end of the year. And they're going to pause officially in Q1 of 2024, where I believe they're going to start quantitative easing next year. So global liquidity will come back. Right now we are in a tightening cycle, rates are up, inflation is still an issue. So the markets are not really primed for a lot of capital to come in. That doesn't mean that the approval can happen now. But in my opinion, the approval news will help drive the price up and eventually as these products are fully launched by BlackRock and others, a lot of capital will start flowing through them. So in a way it's a good thing, but still on principle, it just shows Gary Gensler is a scumbag regulator. So once again, Valkyrie got their futures ETF approved by the SEC, so expect more volatility around Ethereum. Now, speaking of Bitcoin, a luxury car maker, Bugatti, and that's a very expensive luxury car maker, Bugatti cars, many of them are like a million dollars and over, officially launches Bitcoin ordinals collection. So really cool that big brands are adopting crypto in different ways, whether it be tokenization, NFTs, and much more. The issue is the Bitcoin blockchain cannot handle these things. It more adds congestion to the network, which increases time of transactions as well as costs. So it's not made for that. And I know there are folks who say, oh, you know, this is a good thing, but I don't think it's a good thing for Bitcoin. I think there are other blockchains out there that can handle these things and not have ridiculous costs and fees. So but I think overall, this is good for the market. Now Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, tweeted out the following today, a few weeks ago, we signed a letter of intent to acquire Fortress Trust. We've since made the decision not to move forward with an outright acquisition. The Ripple will remain as an investor in Fortress. The Fortress team is incredibly talented and has built products solving real customer problems. While this outcome is different from what was originally planned, we'll continue to support them and hope to work together in the future. So obviously, we don't know the details as to why they're pulling out here, but they will remain an investor. So just an update on that, folks. Now a quick word from our sponsor, and that is Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. Uphold is a great platform that I've been using since 2018, so I can certainly vouch for this platform. They have 10 plus million users, 250 plus crypto currencies, and they're available in 150 countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on this platform. If you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. Now we have big news around Coinbase. They tweeted out today, the expansion continues. Thrilled to announce that Coinbase International Exchange has secured regulatory approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to enable perpetual futures for non -U .S. retail customers. You may have seen the phase two of our go -broad, go -deep strategy for international expansion. Providing greater access to go -broad products, including derivatives, is a crucial part of that strategy, all with the support of forward -looking regulators. Coinbase Advance will begin to offer perpetual futures trading in the coming weeks as access to regulated derivatives expands to more global customers. So really big win here for Coinbase, obviously it excludes U .S. users, but they're going to be able to offer futures trading and much more to many parts of the world. And if only the United States could get its act together and pass regulations and do the right things, you know, U .S. users could benefit from this. But you know, once again, we're dealing with clowns like Gary Gensler. Now PayPal patent apps signal an interest in Layer 2's NFTs. PayPal continues, folks, to just go aggressive in the crypto market. Obviously, recently they launched a stablecoin. We know back in 2021, they launched crypto trading for both PayPal and Venmo. They've been four patent applications, which were published since September 21, suggesting that PayPal is taking a close look at distributed ledger tech. So they're going all in, folks, and I don't blame them, right? You better innovate and adapt to the new disruptive technology, or you will be disrupted and be put out of business. Just ask the folks at Blockbuster what happened to them as Netflix and the internet and streaming and much more went and took their lunch. So really, really bullish. Let me give some details on these applications. The most recent application, published Thursday and originally filed in March of 2022, delves into the details of how validators or miners should be selected during the process of adding transactions to the blockchain. The document states that the company's disclosed techniques could advantageously allow steering of blockchain requests to a desired subsets of miners slash validators. Three other patent applications released on September 21 were also filed in March of 2022. One offered up supposedly new methods and systems to enable off -chain transactions through NFT marketplaces. Boy, imagine PayPal launching an NFT marketplace. Another mentions the concept of a so -called omniverse, which in this context suggests a product that deals in multiple metaverses. The third describes another conceptual online transaction processor. This processor's goal is to facilitate payments between users and merchants operating on different network layers, layer ones and layer twos in a more efficient manner. So essentially looking to build interoperability, that is going to be key. And notice users and merchants, right? So you may have users, let's say on the XRP ledger and merchants on the Polygon blockchain, how do they connect, right? And I'm just giving an example, obviously they mentioned layer one and layer twos here. So it could be like Ethereum and Polygon is a layer two scaling solution, but also there's going to have to be compatibility with different blockchains. So really great stuff here from PayPal and a sign of what's to come folks. This is a stuff that makes me very bullish. Now Circle, they're expanding USDC on the Polygon blockchain, and that's going to be launched on October 10th. So Circle continues to make smart moves here, pretty much getting USDC on all the top blockchains. And once again, there's going to be interoperability and much more. So the ecosystem continues to grow. Now folks, some of you may have seen this, the New York Post did an article saying the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, secretly withdrew $280 million in assets before the crypto firm collapsed. This is according to sources, right? So they didn't provide any proof. Well, the folks at Gemini, they addressed this issue and gave some clarity that it's actually false. They said, we are disappointed that the New York Post has chosen to recklessly publish a completely misleading story about the Gemini earn program. Everything the post alleges in its story is the exact opposite. The $282 million that was withdrawn from the Genesis in August of 2022 was in fact earned users money. It was not Gemini's corporate funds, and it was not the personal funds of our founders, Cameron and Tyler, or their investment from Winklevoss Capital. So they clarified that, but kind of a hit piece here from the New York Post. Now folks, speaking of the Winklevoss twins, Mark Zuckerberg, and many of you know the history of Facebook with the Winklevoss twins and Mark Zuckerberg, well, Mark was interviewed on the Lex Friedman podcast, and they did it through the metaverse. People have been roasting Mark and his version of metaverse for years, they've lost billions of dollars. Look, I've even roasted him a little bit, right? Because their metaverse product was not great, but boy, have they made a huge leap. Guys, go check out the interview with Mark Zuckerberg on the Lex Friedman podcast. They did it through the metaverse using the Oculus, and the new feature is this lifelike representation of their faces and their upper body, essentially, and it is incredible, folks. It is incredible. You have to see this. And you may say, Tony, why are we talking about this? Well, folks, this metaverse set up with full immersion, right, will eventually include a lot of NFTs and blockchain and tokens. It's all part of the same technological adoption. You're going to see more tokenization, once again, everything running on the blockchain, and you're going to need the blockchain in the metaverse because it's going to be hard to plug in Web2 payment apps, right? It's going to be hard to go use PayPal in the metaverse versus using stable coins or different tokens to exchange value. So this is incredible. I'm really blown away by what Mark and the folks at Meta did here. And I'm not some big advocate of you must live in the metaverse. I believe the metaverse is going to be useful. I think with everything in life, you've got to have balance. Will I be participating in some metaverses? Yes. Will I be spending all my time in the metaverse? No. I will be out getting fresh air, touching grass, going out for walks and so forth. That is how I grew up. Obviously, we live in a digital world, but we have to balance it out. But future generations, if you're listening, some of you younger kids, somebody listening to this 10 years from now, please don't be fully immersed in the metaverse. Have a balance, spend some of your life outside of it. But folks, this is incredible. Go check it out. Finally, some more good news here. Our judge denies temporary release for Sam Bankman -Fried suggests he could face a very long sentence. That is music to my ears. I love it. This guy is a fraud, a liar, a criminal. He should go to jail along with Alex Mashinsky. And we have to make sure we do a good job of flagging these guys, man, because we don't need this kind of stuff in the crypto industry. We're trying to mature, have good infrastructure and avoid any type of corruption and criminal activity as best as possible. Obviously, it's hard to stop those things. They happen because it's part of human nature. Just look at Bernie Madoff. He was in the most regulated financial markets, yet he was scamming people out of millions, if not billions. I hope this guy goes to jail for a long time and he doesn't get off because we know his parents are connected politically and there's a whole bunch of stuff that's been happening there where money from FTX was funneled to his parents. So, you know, I hope they are all held accountable, folks, friendly reminder, my interview with Congressman Warren Davidson will be published tomorrow. So be sure to check that out. Make sure you got the subscribe button hit, hit the five star rating on the podcast platforms. And I'll talk to you all later. Bye bye.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from Holesky Testnet Goes Live
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Thursday, September 28th, 2023. Ethereum developers successfully launch the Holsky Testnet, Python Network releases a 2 .0 whitepaper, Espresso Systems and Caldera launch Vienna, and VanEck prepares to launch its ETH ETF. All this and more starts right now. The Arbitrum on Gitcoin Grants Round is now live. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider donating by visiting ethdaily .io forward slash gitcoin. Ethereum core developers successfully launched the Holsky Testnet, a proof -of -stake testnet set to replace Squirrely. The testnet achieved finality after the 10 initial epochs. Holsky was deployed with an active validator set of 1 .4 million validators and a testnet ETH supply of 1 .6 billion at Genesys. Holsky operates on Chain ID 17000. Holsky allows anyone to join as a public validator. The initial infrastructure includes a faucet from Quicknode alongside support on the Etherscan and Beacon Chain block explorers and an RPC endpoint from ethpandaops .io. Developers can use the testnet for staking and protocol development tests. Ethereum testnets usually have a five -year lifespan. The Pythe Data Association released the Pythe Network Whitepaper 2 .0, a paper that outlines a new cross -chain model for price delivery. The paper introduces a pull oracle architecture, the PytheNet appchain for price aggregation, and describes how update fees, rewards, and governance responsibilities will be managed. The whitepaper serves as a guide for transitioning Pythe Network's implementation and status into a permissionless stage. It aims to create a self -sustaining network, attract high -quality data publishers, and compensate them with consumer -generated fees. Pythe Network provides off -chain price feed oracles with data input from participants such as exchanges and market makers. Espresso Systems and Caldera co -deployed Vienna Network, an OP -stack chain integrated with the Espresso Sequencer. The new rollup was deployed on Espresso Systems' Cortado Testnet and is publicly available for all users on the testnet's public homepage. The release also includes a bridge UI, a testnet faucet, and a block explorer. The Cortado Testnet provides fast pre -conformations and allows users to submit transactions for both the OP -stack and Polygon -ZkEVM chains. Cortado also features a catch -up mechanism. Espresso Systems plans to integrate verifiable information dispersal and a peer -to -peer fallback network in a future release. And lastly, VanEck announced plans to launch the VanEck Ethereum Strategy ETF, coined as eFute. Rather than investing directly in ETH, eFute will invest in cash -settled ETH futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. eFute itself will be listed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The ETF is structured as a C -corp targeting long -term investors. The price of ETH rallied above $1 ,650 amid the ETF news and successful Holsky testnet launch. In other news, Optimism initiates the process of forming a security council, OP Labs outlines its dispute game design for the OP stack, and Coinbase receives regulatory approval for perpetual futures. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
Monocle 24: The Briefing
"thursday" Discussed on Monocle 24: The Briefing
"You're back with the briefing on monocle 24. As we've been discussing tomorrow, marks the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps one of the most pressing questions will be how to rebuild Ukraine as civilians try to reestablish their lives. In part four of our Ukraine series, Monica's Helsinki correspondent Petrie burts off, sat down with the chief economist, I was from the European bank for reconstruction and development, and began by asking about the key challenges that Ukraine faces as it sets up to rebuild its war ravaged infrastructure and connection of Ukraine. The first one is stable peace, stable resolution to the conflict. The second one is institutional improvement in Ukraine. And the third one is money. The third one is the easiest to resolve because the international community stands ready to support Ukraine. I'm also optimistic about the second ingredient institutions because the prospect of EU accession provides an opportunity for Ukraine to get on this reform path and improve the quality of its governance. So the most challenging ingredient is finding a stable solution to the conflict. If we look at the work that the bankit that you represent does, give us a picture of how you support Ukrainian businesses and the authorities and help the business community in the country to thrive.
Monocle 24: The Globalist
"thursday" Discussed on Monocle 24: The Globalist
"I like to cite Egon bar the architect of German politics is that U.S. is irreplaceable, but Russia is unmovable. But isn't this idea that Russia is deep down just another European country kind of what has led Europe into what happened a year ago? Is this not a lie Europe has been telling itself now for 30 years that it'll all be okay eventually Russia's really just like us. Well, you're right to the fact that the 24th of February we have found out the hard way that we were maybe naive, foolish to certain degree that we thought that Francis fukuyama might still be right and our model of life are democratic open societies. And we'll sort of kind of withdraw backs, but we'll expand and convince others to join our clubs. So to say, and we have found out that their countries which consider our very existence, the model of life we are pursuing as an act of aggression to a certain degree. But Russia was never only European, never in its history. But and it always has been a challenge for itself, especially, but also for partners. I believe that architecture architects and Europe will look very differently in the future. Sometimes I compare the situation we're living in with an earthquake and the scientists still trembling. We don't know where the tectonic plates will rest at the end, but we know that the Santander rear fault will be larger and bigger. And that I hope at least it was one or the other bridge will still be standing because we might need them. That was Austria's minister for foreign affairs, Alexander schellenberg speaking to Andrew Muller at the Munich security conference. Celtic came on today's globalist. We'll hear from the actor Vasant cassel, about setting the right tone for his latest series. Liaison. I didn't want it to be like the stereotype spy thing where, you know, they fight forever and I did all my stunts to have this feeling of violence and effectiveness. That's all coming up on monocle 24.
Patriots Beat
"thursday" Discussed on Patriots Beat
"My guess is, I mean, well, they'll be on the road against Minnesota on Thanksgiving, so I don't know if that's gonna be a factor, but they've worn them on the road before, especially on Thanksgiving because that's like the one game that stands out in my head is that Thanksgiving game in Detroit. I think it was where they were. Well, they did that twice. They didn't know too, and then in, I think, go 9, whatever. I'm sure my brand is remembering O 9 more than O two. I feel like it was that long haired Brady. I feel like it was long hair to number 9. For 9 or ten or whatever, the reason I remember the O2 game, it's the first time in my life watching football I saw running back split out outside the numbers. They put in the motion Antoine Smith all the way to the outside. I thought it was the wildest thing I'd ever seen. Yeah. So the pat patriot logo, the helmets look absolute fire. I love the stripes down the middle of the helmet. I don't remember the old ones having those stripes down the middle. So the ones they wore in O 9 were a little different. There's like 5 or 6 different iterations of the white helmet and there's different color face masks and everything. The ones they wore in O 9 were that was the remember the 50th anniversary of the AFL. So those were based on the almost entirely. They actually used a different logo. And in 1960, they had a different logo. It was just like a hat. If you Google try corn logo. Anyway, those are based on the 19 the ones from 1960, the ones they wore in 2009. The ones they wore in ten, 11 and 12 and the ones they're bringing back now is more like the mid 80s to early 90s. Got it. Is what that one's based on the shoulder stripes a little different. There's the third stripe. You're thinking of just the two red stripes on the helmet. These ones have a blue in between the two red. So that's like the 80s. It looks great. I was kind of hoping they'd bring them back with the red face mask. I like the white too. But yeah, no, it's cool. It's fun. That's why I normally try to be like, you know, objective journalist on the show. I wear my high school hat or just the generic logos, but I had to break this out today. I didn't do the Jersey. I don't have my Steve grove in Jersey with me, unfortunately. If you're talking about like what games are they gonna wear them right? I look at the last two of the last three times in ten to 12, they warm against the jets, so I feel like there's a possibility there. In the opener against the ravens, like getting it going early, I could see that. I could see one of the holiday games late in the season. I think week 6, whatever it is against the bangles. Yeah, week 16, Christmas Eve day. Again, Cincinnati red like Santa like that would be awesome. Thursday night against the bills feels like a possibility. The two I don't..
The Twilight Zone Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on The Twilight Zone Podcast
"Tonight.
Monocle 24: The Briefing
"thursday" Discussed on Monocle 24: The Briefing
"At the latest business news on joint as usual by you and pots at you and i think there was maybe a year ago. A certain cockeyed optimism among fixed renters. That the exodus from the cities in the general covid nineteen lockdown shutdown turned down might lead to a plummeting house prices Exactly the opposite has occurred. Yeah we'll seems a long time ago. Not doesn't it's It's been months. Which is seeing the deepest recession in many countries in a generation Within living memory really houses they were on the world are surging average. Jumping seven point three percents in the latest talk. That's the fastest rate of house growth since two thousand and six. This is data from night. Flanks friday night franks global house price index. They looked at fifty-six countries around the world turkey tops. The table with house price growth of thirty two percents. Although it should be noted that turkey's general inflation rates came out this morning as sixteen percent. Turkey has an inflation problem. New zealand comes in second in this league of house. Price shame with prices rising by twenty eighteen percent museum. Contractors had a lot of house price inflation in recent years but allows our country was double digit inflation. The us sweden the netherlands uk. Russia house prices rising in many countries around the world. Of course the key reason is that massive fiscal and monetary stimulus. We've seen from central banks and governments around the world. Loads of money flushing into the world's financial system that has to find a home somewhere and as so often the case it ends up in house prices countries. Trying to roll back on this new zealand's recently would its tax incentives property investments and the chinese government also stepping in to rein in developers bank lending to the sector but those worries over bubble allowed to just keep on keep on growing and on the markets with old you recognition that by the time you notice. A stock is being ramped. It's usually way too late to pilot into it to yourself for yourself. Rather what's going on there while plenty people still potty into they spun you remember the game stalker at the game. Stop story back in january. This latest means stock seems to have even more traction behind. Amc cinemas and you can imagine it's not been a great year to be running cinemas the amc balance-sheets are one of the world's largest similar preaches. A sea of red many status still open. It's still loss-making but a lot of people think is a good time to buy the stock for much of last year. The company is worth around about half a billion dollars stock now worth thirty one billion dollars. Eight almost doubled in value yesterday alone. It's all to do with this retail frenzy. People tipping. It's on twitter saying they're getting text messages from family urging them to buy. Amc others gathering at street corners with homemade posters saying amc to moon and apparently is being promoted at pool parties. Sadly none of which. I've been invited to whether the company is worth thirty billion dollars more than tesco or delta airlines is another matter the it's not even open yet this morning but it's already up some ten percent in premarket trading. What could possibly go wrong. You and pulse at bloomberg. Thank you as always for joining us. You're listening to the briefing on monocle. Twenty four that is all for this edition of the briefing. It was produced by james and as manager was christie evans. The briefing is back tomorrow at midday. uk time of your to that as well. i'm andrea miller. Thank you for listening..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"This is the thing that we speak about who i went into the room. I went into the group. I had a ten minute chat. This is how we're gonna be tracking analytics to actually know what is the content. Your followers want to see and then we provided a resource for them. Now let's bring it back to the pdf because you know out here like a squirrel trying to get a nut trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. We made it a pdf. Why we wanna see how people are using if they use it because once they once they start using it and once they say hey. This is really great. Then we have a very clear path. How would it look like for us to create our own social curator analytic monitor. I don't even think that's the right word. But when they go to their dashboard they could actually see to analytics as inputted by them. So we don't have clients. We don't say he have a meeting. Let's talk about your brand identity. We talk about these things. No we provide recent resources for us to do it on their own find their voice and deployed against their strategy. That's great. I think that another problem. That i've been facing and i think that other people have asked me about this idea of being multi hyphen it for instance if i have Let's see my instagram. And it's dr dergham. Also a dentist and i'm also doing voice skills. Sometimes when i think about social media i started to think. Do i need to have separate instagram profiles. Do i need to incorporate all in one and you see celebrities with gary danner. Chuck has everything in one. Then you see others where they have disparate ones where it's different and i think those kind of blocks sometimes prevent someone from moving forward actually making content and i finally there's other items like that as well so we sent tend to say well. It's time you don't have time but really it could be other things but are preventing us because we don't have clarity on what our brand is to social curator help people understand where they are in terms.
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"I listen like if you're not solving a problem you're in a very hard time having a business and so we set out to solve a very very big problem. Which is i. Don't know what to say and i don't know what to post now. I have to be the first person. Say a nontechnical founder. I know jack squat about coating but watch me. Sign up for a coating court so we hired our cto in march twenty twenty. The world was struck with a global pandemic. And that was the time where we were able to really put the pedal to the metal because we were able to start building out solutions for business owners at the time of this conversation. I don't either. I wouldn't even call us yet. A complete sas company where in the process of it and oftentimes. The thing i want to do is i want to hide. I don't wanna be here having a conversation with you in tech builders right. Because i'm just like anything but tech but when i look at what the tech team is doing what i look at what our developers our cto doing. It moves me. And i'm like you have to be in front of it to get the thing that you want like. I cannot build a tech company. If i am afraid to stand in a room of tech builders. I've always believed that. I wanted to be the smallest fish in the biggest pond in so to have this opportunity. Far be it for me to sit here and like abdicate. This wonderful opportunity to admit. I don't know what i'm doing in a year. I'm going to stand back on the stage and say i didn't know what i was doing. I figured it out. And i just think it's a testament to the human spirit. I am no one special and ainu. Oftentimes i have like a lot of passion. My voice like i. I've conviction my voice. I joke that i came out of the womb and told my mom that she did it wrong. Like that's just who i am but i was never this person. I was never the person in this room. I was never a person on this stage and then all the sudden. You're struck when you watch and i have to be very Take a moment and see how thankful i am that my mother did not pass ended up for twenty talk with my mother today but when you look at life and you realize how short it is you're just like what am i afraid of like. I'm a am. I afraid of failing. Am i afraid of what people will say. Am i afraid of looking stupid and older sudden when you watch somebody emergency room having brain surgery. You're just like that doesn't matter. I'm afraid of a stranger on the internet and their opinion of me. I'm afraid of what my cousins will say. My friends will say that..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"I m learning conversations from other people so we talk about mentors one. My very first mentor. Me and her name is up until a couple of weeks ago. She had no idea who i was. So the people who had impact on my life many thanks to them. But they still don't know who i am. I just think everything we want is on the other side. How much willing to work. We're willing to do to find the answers that we want while i am floors by the answer truly You're definitely an inspiration jasmine So so i wanna talk. I feel like any to take a moment here The the one of the most amazing things about your story is that you don't You don't fit within any single one of the traditional boxes that people you know create so it are a you know as a photographer. People say you are a creator as a sas founder. People say you're techy You know you are a mom. You are a founder. There are all these different definitions. And yet you defy and and a lot of them apply to you as well. We'd love to hear about how you see yourself and as you move from one space to the next where people use those definitions or those is Is it something that you have in your is is it to mindset that you have that allows to see beyond that Just share with us some of your perspectives. When did things that. I find so intriguing and beguiling about you is that you are able to see in the world of audio and so the fact that you can just hear that i've always been on the periphery and for probably the first win t two years of my life. I resented being on the periphery. I'm an introvert. I'd like i mentioned on the daughter of an immigrant. We grew up very core. We grew up government funding. I got scholarships to go to school. I was never truly a standout. Never got great grades in high school. But i wasn't valley victorian so if that need always followed but very similar to how i grew up i would float between different circles of people. I have to say for anybody. Who's listening and you feel like you yourself for all. Also on the periphery. It's really beautiful. Vantage point and i have learned the value of watching from the outside in to find other people who deeply resonate with and that care about them on a human level. Dale carnegie said it best. He said your business will go farther being genuinely interested in two other people than trying to get two hundred people interested in you. And so i think that for so long i thought that being. On the periphery. Bring a wallflower. Was a disservice. But it actually ended up being an asset. Because i can walk into a room both virtually and in person stand on the outside and then find distinctly who..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"And it was one of those times in your life where he realised that life is too short not to do something that truly lights you up for the thing that you feel. You've been called to do so. I dropped out of school. Eight fully intended to go back and get my scholarships. But i dropped off. Dropped out and i wanted to be with my mom and at the time i had just gotten married. I wanted my mom to be there at my wedding. She walked down the aisle with my dad and a couple of months after getting back from a honeymoon. I sat down with my husband. Said i really don't want to go back to law school. I absolutely hate it there. I don't wanna die lawyer to which she replied. Well what do you want to do. And he said well. If i can be happy for the rest of my life doing something. I want to be a photographer to which he calmly blinked a few times ltd. Okay but you. You don't have a camera. And like i know but if i had a camera i really think i could be a photographer. And that was the start of a pretty pretty crazy time in life that has since set the standard for things that i want to pursue in every iteration just because we don't have the knowledge just because we don't have the tools it doesn't mean we can't do it in so i was gifted a very simple camera and in two thousand seven i booked my first client in by two thousand ten voted one of the top shockers in the world by two thousand eleven. One of the most influential photographers in the world invited hundred twelve and one of the most socially influential photographers. And i think that that just goes as testament that there are a bunch of people who are underfunded underqualified under educated under connected. Who could still do things that they want to do. As long as they keep the customer in the forefront of their mind i learned that very grassroots level on a one to one service based business and then got into consulting where a lot of creative entrepreneurs were like. Hey we saw what you did and we want to know. Will it work in our industry. And so i started consulting then what i decided to do is to get into course creation because i wanted to scale the knowledge that i was teaching and imparting with other business owners and then i realized that there are so many digital core says and there are so many people teaching but what actually got into the biggest hurdle for so many business owners was not just the knowing it was actually the doing. It's not that there's a lack of education. There's a lack of practical tools and resources to actually get people to do the things they want on behalf of their business so my husband and i he is my co-founder innocent. There's three main pressure points that we see again as a result of consulting as a result of professionally speaking as a result of creating these courses. Is that people. Don't know what to say on social media. They don't they don't have anything to post on social media in a really tired of all the next iteration social media without having a very clear pan plan so i said well what would it look like for us to create a company that helps people note today that gave him the things to post and gave a clear cut social marketing plan so we set our sights. We named it social curator in. Let me just tell you it was a hot mess. I had never started anything. Close it even remotely looked like attack business. I mean i. It didn't start off as a saas company in the beginning..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"Podcast listening applications also of different applications. We're also alive on multiple different sites websites and web app sites. We're working on multiple default. The motive not live yet. But it's going to come up very soon. We have civil. Peel is already being tested and work like that. Which means that we're exposing the content to a very diverse list of communities and individuals and people will be exposed to that content. It's not that it's going to be segmented within tiktok the tiktok community the tiktok experience the way that tiktok is package and you need to do it within the tiktok format. No it's gonna be Heard by runners. There are looking for liberty of longer format within. And you know an alarm clocks. Just want the fast highlights of water the news or responses to. How's the weather so The user journeys the persona types that are going to listen to the use cases. Where would they going to listen to does not have a fifteen second perfect visual audio or experience. In order to win the game in the networking the users will find your content. Because that's what they're looking for him because that's how they'll be exposed to it. There's a lot of diversity in the places that the audio will be listened to an exposed to potential users I think that's a. That's a very big difference when you go in a democratized way that audio bursts wanted to build it in more like a b. to b. to c. kind of a model and not a single branded the b. two c. app that you either hit or miss win in it got gotta be in it or not kind of mentality. That makes a lot of sense. I think what is interesting to me. Is this idea that you could have long form content segment it too short form content but that also the short form content can inform long form content. And i think that's what's really great abou- audience. I i just want to remind everybody on your tech builders. If you're finding this conversation valuable please follow tech. Builders may has some great rooms and appreciate everything that she's Offered to us the past few months in terms of her knowledge brett consolo. Who's here as well. Today is.
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"That they need at the time that they need it so allows for that customization so even within the volume of quant of quality content. There's still more than people can consume at all times or in the way that they need to in any given time and so. That's where i really think about these voice. Ai technologies that audio burst has applied. It is really gone into multiple levels of complexity are really having an impact was just figure out you know what's in there but maybe some key word it transcription technologies and keyword else's technologies could have done could have gotten part of the way there. But then they're actually identifying the segment that's relevant and they're applying multiple attributes that's like an additional level of machine learning capability and then after that they're extracting that packaging it so you can consume it in the short form so yet another level so amir talked about some of the technical challenges. They had early because they tried to solve a really big problem. It's not just search problem. It's a search in semantic an packaging for consumption problem and doing it in a in a four media format. The heretofore hasn't really been available to that. We think about in the tech world of blobs binary large objects that's essentially what it was. Just look at that. And you're like i don't know what that is Whereas tax week break it up and look at it and really understand what it was in this case. What they're doing they're taking something that in the past was a black box in there actually making it as accessible and even more accessible because of the way they you to consume it for audio may also on. That is just the same concerns that i think. Come up whenever we talk about a i And so a mirror you know. The the machine is making a lot of the decisions around essentially what to make more discoverable and what not to and as you know. There are a lot of ethical concerns around ai. driving sometimes some bad decisions Because of the bias that humans have etcetera and then just exasperatingly with some of the things you think about and you worry about In our thinking through how to how to create controls and limits risks around in the future. It's a great christian. So may i do agree that there's bias built in into a often that just drives by what users how uses reacted to content and new could control affect a lot of the times the recommendations that we're exposing to so there's this few or there's several layers of protection or approval and and work that we're doing within one we have Both outsource crowd source team of community members..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"We're we're at this work every single day. Chipping away. Chipping away chipping away. Thank thank you for the question. All right michelle you mentioned to my toughest second one or are you cut. Michelle your muda. Yeah i'm sorry i'm good. The other was about corporate social responsibility but it was good. We're rounding up so that's a whole other deeper together. Another room for that list on twitter. Thank you so much michelle caught. This was an anchor for being so kind about You know answering all these questions especially mine. So i appreciate that to throw it over to you. Yeah i just think one thing i realized is From my observations of the interacts. It's been that the interacts has really been trying to do things different. And make sure that they try to do things right before. People are being held accountable to do things right. And i know that for myself. I would much rather work for a company like that and i just feel honored to be positioned next to two nominal women like sudan clawed and. I hope we can continue this conversation in the future. Thank you so much i. I'm so honored to be here to be assets like my only my second clubhouse believe it or not and so thank you for having me and thank you to everyone in the club for asking such incredible questions and it takes a village in this is Incredible village to be part of so. Thank you so much for letting me share some of my my beliefs and i look forward to getting to know you more so thank you so my aunt chitra really appreciate it. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you and thank you. Everyone joining us a wonderful wonderful night. Everyone night by if you enjoyed that conversation would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and be a part of the tech thursday community. Hope you have a great day..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"Take it. That's just that's just where we are right now. I just want to say thank you for for offering that i think you know in society were sort of trying to struggle to understand what exactly or our corporations roles do they serve Inside of our lives and in our societies are if there's any background noise here But but i think as a society we're trying to understand especially the younger generation. The one i sort of identify with We want more out of the companies we work for than than simply places we go in clock in and clock out so I think for sorta championing that and and creating an environment where you can hold these discussions because you know as you know when you invite in social issues in politics into the workplace. People don't always agree. And oftentimes the most sort of touchy issues are the ones where people don't agree. And so to have a a way to facilitate discussion between people who don't agree and don't see eye to eye But still welcome in the tough. Discussions is is something. I is probably one of the hardest jobs in a company. So i thank you for sorta leading that effort. Yes thank you so much claude. In william for the great question I there was one more question code. Are you able to sail a longer. Yes go for thank you michelle. Welcome yet now. Have to thanks. Great conversation Something that really piqued my interest in in thanked. You're saying clot. Were the difference between beijing and leading an organization you like. We don't micromanage here at bainer. Can you go into what that looks like. Especially in your organization. Because i get this a lot. I prefer to lead people. I prefer to help them find a way and help them by. It's okay to make errors. Let's figure out how to how to go back and correct things. Move forward in what we learn from screwing up and i think a lot of times in the workplace especially for underserved communities. We have a smaller error margin for error. So how did you do that in our organization moving for manager of the leader to really give people that room fail question michelle and really appreciate it. We're really high touch culture. You probably picked up on that by now meaning you. Don't gary sleeps. Yes i sleep but we really are.
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"So that's the second question Hopefully hopefully that was a reasonable answer and the first question is a a great one. Because so i was at vein. I was gary's first senior higher. I was living in london. I was running digital strategy. The large advertising agency working on p. and g. brand so i was very Very re i had a lot of rigor structure going back to Sonali last comment and question and Gary hired me. I moved to new york. I was svp that was running Lever account was great about a year in he and i had like our yearly check in and it had dawned on me some years prior but that i was really i had fallen out of love with advertising i had fallen out of love with the creation of the campaign and sitting with clients and kind of picking apart font or copy. Or you know you name it right. I just lost my love for it. But i really love working with teams and building the teams that do those ad campaigns. So he said to me. You know what's going on. I said thank you so much. I love this place. This is the best agency i've ever been at. I'm no longer mention advertising. And he said to me. What are you interested in. And i said i only care about people i only care about the heartbeat of its place. Okay he said so. You hear you hear the word heart. He said great great. We're going to do something phenomenal together. Need you to do this job for eighteen months. I said i don't have a t- more months. And so i went and i found my back fell and six months later i actually resigned from vena Was a it was a. I sat when we sat in the room with gary. And i just said this is a really challenging conversation and ninety minutes later i really did leave and in that conversation he said to me. I'm going to get to the punchline. A second but in that conversation he said to me..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"Have anything they'd like to add or ask before i jump in again i'll jump in if you don't mind yes so there's always a high bar when you walk into the somme and chat throw driving But this one is just really said a different level of sort of inspirational so clot if you're willing to talk about this for hours. I'm ready to furiously take notes. Thank you todd. I'm sort of blown away Not only by the conversation but by your website and just want to tell people to go to claude silver dot com to so self explanatory about your life's purpose of joyful service and unlock emotional optimism like the touch on that. If i can't hear I work at the on the human side of digital transformation with many companies throughout the us primarily and Wondering you've been there for seven years twelve year anniversary. You come in at the five year. Mark you alluded to maybe some changes that were required or some evolution that was required so to questions and they might not be quick answers. What what were the most significant challenges you've faced as you got started on the human transformation adventure media and then what do you think is the best way to build this into the lives of young learners so they can develop the human skills related to emotional optimism early on so they come into the workplace with some skills and capabilities related to this. Thank you so much. Todd i really appreciate you. And thanks for the plug. That was really kind. I'm an answer. The second question i the i have a two and a half year old so i don't really know what's being taught at in elementary or junior high yet but i'm sure some of you on the phone can tell me my two and a half year old is I hope picking up some good traits. But we'll see i fundamentally believe that emotional intelligence and how to build your empathy muscle and how to be kind and how to treat people and a hat it. What is intuition and had a lean on lean in on your intuition. I e your gut. What does your gut say. Those types of things need to be taught at a very very young age. And i'm sure they are in different kinds of schools They have to be. I have to..
Tech Thursday Podcast
"thursday" Discussed on Tech Thursday Podcast
"I always say bad being accommodating empathetic to your team Means that you don't do things that scale as in you are able to do one offs and able to work with each person situations in a way as much as possible to accommodate with they have going on in their life And so i love to learn about some of the ways you do that as well at at work and how you coach and work with other managers as they learn how to how to do this effectively sure and do you mean how to work with diverse populations effectively. Yeah yes you know our. I think our situation might be a little bit different than the average bears because one we have a very entrepreneurial disruptive ceo and in an independently owned company and that has allowed that has allowed us to really be made in the way. Gary has envisioned us to to be made if that makes sense. It's not we don't have to go to a board and there's not a whole leadership team. There's just one person who has dictated what the culture should be at from the top. And i do think that has to happen and you know he put that in place. Many many many years ago has hired me and gave me this wonderful opportunity to scale him and to and to bring his vision to life with many other leaders. now that have really gotten. Were coming out of adolescence ourselves. Today i think is in fact our twelve year anniversary and so the reason i bring that up is i think that change is challenging for all of us in all of our cultures for for a variety of reasons but i i'm fortunate in that changes a little bit different in our culture because again really there's one person who is setting the who's you know. He's he's the northstar i mean. We were at this company many ways. Because we believe in gary's vision and so i just wanted to just put that out there that i i know that i work in a very different type of place with a very different type of ceo however to answer the actual question for us we were a sea of sameness for for a bit there until we probably turned around. Turn about five years old. i started. I started at the company when we turn five and and we did not have a tenured leaders in place who were thinking about diversity or thinking about inclusively We didn't it took us time to evolve into mature as a company to bring leaders in that understood. How just understood like how much more we could do with. Diverse workforce more. We could do when we created a much more inclusive culture and the coaching that i do and the coaching we brought you know at this point. I brought in a lot of coaches and a lot of Trainers and and Sessions at this point to really help us understand our bias which is incredibly important unconscious bias. We all talk about it. We all know it's there but how can we how can we become more self aware with our own selves and be empowered to to politely. Call someone else out. And i mean that very politely to be kind and and kind of help someone check themselves before they wreck themselves So you know it really all comes down to. We want to create a company. Here where people in twenty years in ten years and seven years. We'll say that time. I spent it. Vader was the best career choice. I ever made that time vader. I was working with a load of different people. That have nothing to do with where i come from the language. I speak how..
Labor Relations Information System
"thursday" Discussed on Labor Relations Information System
"Way and the different way is not when the chief goes down to a union made it but rather when the chief interrogates employees about what was said and done in a union meeting and labor board. So you know are pretty strong about that They think that what happens. In union meetings Is almost always off limit. Unless there's some sort of Illegal action being contemplated at the union meeting and that. It's an unfair labor. Practice is not direct dealing against the unfair labor practice of interfering with the internal organizations of the union. It is an unfair labor practice for the employer to try to find out what was said during the course of union maidens okay. That's it for the april twenty twenty one addition of first thursday. Hey we are really thrilled to be starting up live. Seminars are i live. Seminars will be happening beginning in. May of twenty twenty one. We begin with our union leadership seminar to be held at the luxor hotel in las vegas. It looks like they The virus issue in las. Vegas has a very much Subsided from where it was before. The luxor is taking all sorts of precaution. Social distancing precautions and we have a lot of people registering for the seminar. We're gonna make sure everybody is safe in the seminar environment. Is you know when we couldn't make those guarantees year. We ended up having to cancel some seminars I'm really optimistic that we're not gonna have to do that. with the seminars. But we are running out of space for the first of our seminars for the may seminar if you're interesting interested in registering for that summit. Our goto elleray has dot com will. Have i think we have about nine speakers coming from all over the country. These are union leaders from police from fire Who will be talking about What it takes to run a successful labor organization and successful from the standpoint of finances from the standpoint of success at the bargaining table success in representing members in the disciplinary process. And we will also be talking about the extraordinary stress today that In particular law enforcement labor organizations are under and how that may expand cover all public sector labor organization so Hope to see you there and with that this is will aitchison signing off..