37 Burst results for "Yahoo"
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
Fresh update on "yahoo" discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"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.
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. 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 tailor -made 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 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. Looking to venture into the world of stablecoins? Explore the open -source stablecoin studio toolkit on Hedera. Whether you're building the next big thing in Web3 or an enterprise banking and payment provider, Stablecoin Studio simplifies stablecoin issuance and management, keeping you at the forefront of on -chain finance. With seamless integration into commercial custody providers and KYC services and built -in proof of reserve functionality, Stablecoin Studio streamlines development and time to market. Harness the power of stablecoins by visiting hedera .com slash unchained. Back to my conversation with Nick. 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.
Unchained
Fresh update on "yahoo" discussed on Unchained
"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. 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 tailor-made 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 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. Looking to venture into the world of stablecoins? Explore the open-source stablecoin studio toolkit on Hedera. Whether you're building the next big thing in Web3 or an enterprise banking and payment provider, Stablecoin Studio simplifies stablecoin issuance and management, keeping you at the forefront of on-chain finance. With seamless integration into commercial custody providers and KYC services and built-in proof of reserve functionality, Stablecoin Studio streamlines development and time to market. Harness the power of stablecoins by visiting hedera.com slash unchained. Back to my conversation with Nick. 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 cooperating witness, 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 everything exactly 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.
Crypto Altruism Podcast
A highlight from Episode 122 - Sweat Economy - Building The Economy of Movement with Web3
"Whole industries are born when you can break a trade -off that is considered standard. In our world, the trade -off is if you want to be healthy, if you want to be active, you got to pay. You got to buy a kit, you got to get your membership, you got to do all of these things. How can you be physically active if you're not paying? Actually, because it's beneficial to you and to a lot of people, we believe that you should be paid for it because it is incredibly valuable. Welcome to the Crypto Altruism podcast, the podcast dedicated to elevating the stories of those using Web3 for good. I'm your host Drew Simon from CryptoAltruism .org. Now, before we get started, a quick disclaimer. While we may discuss specific Web3 projects or cryptocurrencies on this podcast, please do not take any of this as investment advice, and please make sure to do your own research on investment opportunities or any opportunity, including its legality. And now, let's get on to the show. Welcome and thanks so much for joining. Whole industries are born when you can break a trade -off that's considered standard. I think that bears repeating and I can't think of a better example of this than Move to Earn. For too long, exercise has seemed like more of a chore for many and a very expensive chore at that, with the pricey gym memberships, expensive equipment, you name it. With the advent of blockchain, however, there is a unique opportunity to disrupt this and transform exercise from a chore into a rewarding and income -generating activity. To dive into this, I'm excited to welcome Oleg Fomenko, co -founder of Sweat Economy, an OG in the Move to Earn space with a mission to reward movement to inspire a healthier and wealthier planet. We discuss how Web3 tools can incentivize healthy actions, the evolution of Move to Earn, onboarding hundreds of millions of users to Web3, and much more. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Oleg to the Crypto Altruism podcast. Okay, Oleg, thank you so much for being here today on the Crypto Altruism podcast. Such a pleasure to have you. Thank you very much, Drew, for having me. Very nice to meet you, Drew. Thank you very much for having me. So excited to have you. I had mentioned this before we got on the call that I've been following it for quite a while, and I'm really fascinated by this whole Move to Earn movement that's going on and how Web3 tools can really change how we get people to be excited about wellness and making healthy life choices. So before we get there, I want to learn about your aha moment that got you excited about Crypto and Web3 in the beginning. I learned about Bitcoin in 2011 from a childhood friend who described what it was, and that definitely perked my interest. Stupid as I was, well, stupid as I am, I got really, really hooked on technology. And I read an awful lot about how it works, the white paper, the Byzantine generals problem, and just basically as much background as I could. In 2011, there wasn't an awful lot. Then I have installed BT Guild. That was the first sort of pool mining software on my old laptop and put it in the corner, and it was sort of chugging along there for about a month, and they mined a few satoshis. Well, actually quite a few satoshis, but because the price was like 20 cents, it wasn't even covering the electricity that I burned on it. And I just threw away a laptop's hard drive for quite a bit right now these days. So I got hooked on tech, and despite the low prices, I actually didn't buy an awful lot of Bitcoin back then. And I had a very interesting sort of music streaming startup back then, and I was trying to figure out how we can do something in crypto, but at best we could just accept Bitcoin payment, which was cumbersome, slow and not terribly interesting, and just handful of people even knew what it was. So opportunity represented itself in 2014 when I started talking to my co -founders about the problem of why are people not as active as they want to be? How come that I used to run some crazy distances and climbing some of the highest mountains in the world, and all of a sudden I couldn't even complete 5k. And, you know, kind of one conversation after another, we very quickly realized that the reason why 100 % of people want to be more active, but they can't, is because nature didn't build us to be active. Nature built us to survive, which means preserving calories rather than spending them. And nature was so serious about it that it gave us this behavioral feature that helped us surviving back then, but right now it's probably a behavioral bug that prevents us from being able to burn those calories called present bias that stops us from, you know, kind of moving and forces us to sit, unless there is a mammoth on the horizon that, you know, that we need to run and kill, or there is something about to make us into food and then we need to run away. And we realized that there is only one solution to present bias, instant gratification. So we kind of went, ooh, so can we actually create instant gratification for every step you take? And that's the story of Sweatcoin. As the name would suggest, we were thinking about building it on blockchain back then, but forking Bitcoin was slow, cumbersome and expensive. Building on Ethereum, we discussed with Vitalik in 2015. We met with him in London. That wasn't really an option because it was just too early. It was a research grade code back then. And we launched in 2016 centralized. And we thought, you know what, give us six months, maybe 12 months, there will be some wonderful blockchain that, you know, we're going to migrate onto. Little did we know that it would take until 2021 for blockchain to get fast enough and robust enough to be able to hold our scale. So, you know, we looked every year and we analyzed everything that was sort of popping up. And until 2021, the answer was consistently, no, we were processing more transactions per second than theoretical throughput of any chain. And in 2021, all of a sudden there was this explosion, there was Algorand, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, BNB, well, BC back then, and Flow and Celo and, you know, kind of all of a sudden it just sort of, there was a rush of these new technologies. And we got really excited and put a team on this and analyzed more than a dozen different chains. And sort on of after spending, I think, four or five months, we made a decision that we want to build on near. And yeah, the rest is history. We launched last September and it's going incredibly well, incredibly well. I'm sure that we're going to have an opportunity to talk about some of the numbers and metrics and, you know, sort of, yeah, totally. Definitely. I mean, you've had quite many, many, many achievements and it's really grown at an incredible pace and the amount of people that you have engaging with this platform now every day. And, you know, it's good that you really took that time to kind of like, you know, think and make sure that you had the right blockchain, the right timing. And it sounds like you made a good choice there with Near. And sustainable business model as well and token economics. Yeah, for sure, for sure, which is great. And so you talked a little bit at a higher level about sweat economy, but do you mind giving an overview to our listeners of, you know, what it is, what the mission is of your organization? Sure. The mission of the regional sweat coin and that's what economy is to make the world more physically active. And, you know, it seems like it's sort of a tree -hogging mission. And the reality is it couldn't be further away from truth because we actually realized that physical activity has tangible financial value. When I say that your physical duty has value, everyone nods, like you just did right now. But if I ask how valuable it is, people kind of go, could you reframe the question? Could you use different words? I'm like, no, I don't have to. Typically, if something is valuable, it has value attached to it. And here we have something valuable, but we cannot attach any number to it. Maybe there is an opportunity there. And then we started thinking there is an interesting economy that draws parallel with physical activity. It's attention economy by some estimates attention economy now is about $7 trillion business, all the Googles, Facebooks, everything advertising related sits in there and actually quite a lot more. And the interesting parallel between physical activity and attention is that like attention, physical activity is valuable to you. You know, when you pay attention, something starts, you know, you can engage with something, you can get new idea, you can meet somebody, you can, you know, potentially entering some sort of a conversation transaction and purchase something. Very similarly, physical activity is a better physical state, it puts you into a better mental state, it extends your life. And like attention, physical activity is beneficial for a lot of other parties, a lot of other participants on the market, starting from your family that is, of course, would prefer to have you physically active rather than not because they want to enjoy your company for longer, they want you to be in a better mood. Your healthcare provider, your insurer, your employer are all interested in you being physically active and actually prepared to pay for it. Especially insurers, they know very well that your health insurance and your life insurance, if you're physically active, should be a lot cheaper because you're a lot better risk and you genuinely a lot better business for them. Now, attention economy exists and it's $7 trillion, movement economy or physical activity economy doesn't. There is absolutely nothing there. We can talk about it, we can discuss these use cases, but it doesn't exist. And then we thought, hang on a second, in order for humanity not to spend 200 years building this economy, why don't we actually think of creating a token that is tokenizing your physical activity and makes it into a liquid asset that you can exchange with other parties? That's how the concept of Sweatcoin and now Sweat was born. So coming back to your original question, Sweatcoin is our health and fitness app. Despite the name, it's actually not crypto because for eight years we couldn't operate in crypto. We got 240 million users using this application. And when we could move to Web3, to blockchain, it was too late to tell everybody, like, look, from tomorrow, it's going to be completely different game. tokenomics is going to be different. You can't do that. So we had to put out a new token that's called Sweat and it is a crypto token built on NIR. And effectively the way the two businesses work together is you choose, you either play Web3 game and you just create your crypto account and then your steps are converted into Sweat. Or as a lot of people, you know, kind of choose to, they don't opt in and then they get Sweatcoins, which is a centralized points, think of it like air miles that you can gather and you can use inside Sweatcoin, but they cannot be traded on exchanges. They are not real crypto and not as liquid as Sweat, the token. And of course, these two tokens have very, very different token economics. Sweatcoin, for every 1000 steps, you earn one Sweatcoin and Sweat is constantly demanding an increase in number of steps in order to meet next Sweat. This way, supply dynamics are a lot healthier and we have become deflationary already from the month of July. So July and August circulating supply has been slowly shrinking. Wow. Interesting. So much going on there and like incredible. First of all, with the amount of folks that you've been able to onboard the love, the idea of like offering, you know, Web3 and Web2 version, because it might just be those people that maybe aren't quite ready yet, but want to experiment a bit, want to learn about the technology first, then it gives them an easy kind of entry, you know, accessible entryway, which is great. And so you talked about the Sweat token, which is the built on the near blockchain. And that's kind of the for the Web3 version, the currency that kind of behind this whole movement economy. So you talked about that users will get this, they'll earn this from from walking, engaging in that physical activity. What can they do with these with these tokens once they actually receive them? What's the like utility of them? Yeah, no, there is there is plenty. But actually, if we take a step back, because I think in the crypto world, a lot of people are sort of obsessed with the word utility. I actually think that the more important question is, if you ask somebody, why is this token valuable? Yeah, what is the answer to that question? And I have answered to both of these questions. But I would like to start with the one that I think is more relevant in long term, why is Sweat valuable? And the reason why Sweat is valuable is because it is produced by your verified physical activity. So when you move, and if you try to cheat, it doesn't work. In fact, if somebody is trying repeatedly to kind of break into the system and you know, sort of game it, then we just disable accounts and they can never return. But if you put in genuine physical activity, so you sweat it, then we verify it. And we issue with this token that is tokenized physical activity of yours. And because of that, there is no single question in people's mind that it is valuable. It's a very, very different relationship to a string of numbers that sort of miraculously appeared out of, I don't know, nothing, airdrop, I don't know, whatever activity. And then people, majority of people, not crypto natives, but crypto curious are wondering, why does it have any value at all? Why is it not zero? And that is an extremely difficult question to answer. Now we don't have this problem. However, crypto educated or crypto informed you are, that's my physical activity. That's my sweat. That's not zero because, you know, it cannot be, you know, can I sweat it over it? Right. And this is an answer to the longterm question. So in five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years time, when people are going to be talking about why is sweat valuable, they're going to say, are you kidding me? It's a tokenized physical activity. How can it be zero? However, it doesn't stop there. You know, in order for us to build movement economy, in order for us to feel sweat with this meaning that it is tokenized physical activity, in order for us to establish financial, you know, kind of number or just a value to it, we need to play a game in the interim that is effectively creating utility and demand drivers for sweat. For a lot of projects, that's all they do. We do have a longterm vision that I've just described to you. The short term vision is extremely simple. You need sweat in order to participate in our kind of network in our platform, you stake sweat, and you earn interest by taking sweat, you also have access to a lot of rewards that are linked to health and fitness, well being fashion, etc. So this is an extremely engaging thing for our users, you are also earning sweat from our learn and earn. And because 90 % of our users are brand new to crypto and web3, they are seeking and are very interested in information. So what is taking? How does it work? You know, how do you transfer? How do you receive crypto? So we are building this whole ecosystem of effectively onboarding products and information, how do you become a proper crypto native? Last but not least, are a lot of functionalities that are being rolled out right now as we're ramping up for our US launch. The most exciting one is Sweat Hero. It's a free NFT game that effectively, if you engage, come in, we give you an NFT of legs. Because, you know, we're about walking and running. Yeah. And, you know, you get the NFT and you can play with other people, literally walking, I'm not going to go into mechanics, if you're interested, you can sort of go and look at it yourself in Sweat Wallet app. Or if you are in the US and you can't still use all the functionality, then you can just go on YouTube and put Sweat Hero and there are plenty of screenshots and screencasts from users that have been participating in beta testing. So you basically go into battle and the game and I battle you and I put 10 Sweat, you put 10 Sweat, the winner takes 80 % and the 20 % goes into what we call a battle fee, which is effectively a token sync that community votes on later on. And that brings me to your one of the first and earlier questions, you know, about move to earn and sustainability of the business, because we're frequently asked, you know, how are you different from, you know, kind of other projects out there? And we say, well, tens of millions of users is one thing, nine years of history and therefore ability to spend time thinking about building sustainable business and sustainable token economics. And what we are doing right now by scaling and not going into that spiral is evidence that we know how to build sustainable businesses that really function. More than that, as I already mentioned, in July and in August this year, Sweat has already become deflationary. So the sources of demand on a monthly basis are higher than emissions of token by you walking, plus all unlocks, users, team investors, and everything. So the number of tokens that hit the market is lower than the number of tokens that are extracted from the market, which in web two world would basically be definition of profitability. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Very interesting. Yeah. So much on the go. And, you know, I love this idea as well of the Sweat Hero NFT game. I think that's a really fun way to engage people in a different way and to bring NFTs in the mix as well. You mentioned move to earn in there too. And so I know that obviously Sweat Economy kind of is a great example of that, you know, move to earn ecosystem fits within there. You know, there's, it's a pretty early stage space for sure. You know, fairly nascent, a couple projects for sure, like yours that are really growing at a rapid pace, but still very early. Where do you see things when it comes to move to earn in the future, let's say five to 10 years from now? What do you think? How do you think it'll shape, you know, the overall wellness sector in the coming years? I mean, there are several very interesting things here. One is, whole industries are born when you can break a trade -off that, you know, is considered standard. You know, for example, internet broke this trade -off where you could deliver rich message, but very few people, or you could deliver extremely poor message and extremely narrow message to a lot of people. Reach and richness was a trade -off. Internet broke that and the rest is history. You know, you can talk to individual with extremely rich message and sometimes screw with their heads as well as Cambridge Analytica has proven, right? So it's a double -edged sword, unfortunately. So in our world, the trade -off is, or if you want to be healthy, if you want to be active, you got to pay. You got to buy kit, you got to get job membership, you got to dress, you got to do all of these things. You know, how can you be physically active if you're not paying? Actually, because it's beneficial to you and to a lot of other people, we believe that you should be paid for it because it is incredibly valuable. Like in attention economy, you are given free products in exchange for your attention. Why wouldn't we be doing exactly the same thing in exchange for my physical activity? So move to earn is breaking this trade -off and I believe that it is going to become a more or less standard approach because if physical activity was only valuable to me and me alone, I would need to pay. But given that it drives an incredible amount of value for everybody, including countries, I mean, if you're physically active, you're going to be more economically active for longer. The tax revenues from you are going to be higher. It's good business. You know, even if you're looking at it in the dry light of day, obstructing yourself from taking care of people, making sure that, you know, this country is a good place for them to live. But even just in financial terms, it's good business. So this is the first thing that all the businesses in move to earn are doing, regardless if they're Ponzi or non -Ponzi actually think that it's great because businesses are reminding people that their physical activity has value. Bingo. That moves this whole idea of movement economy forward. The other trend that I see is that we need to get fewer people who are focusing on crypto natives, which is the case with a lot of other products and are focusing on mass market, because the value is not in making very, very narrow field of already reasonably rich and wealthy people more physically active. The real value to humanity is going into the lower social stratas, because that typically is where behavior change is most needed. If you look at dominant in A and B social groups, but it's starting to ramp up as you go lower down the income tail. So we need to start focusing on these people. We need to start developing propositions that are absolutely free, that are extremely simple to engage with, like what's what economy is doing. Because a lot of people are asking me, crypto, web3, what's your advice? And my simple advice is, look, we're so early, I can't even point a finger where to go. But if any of you remember internet of 96 and 97, you would remember that, I mean, there was Yahoo, right? There were very, very early businesses. None of them are really sort of dominating. And the opportunity is still there. And the opportunity number one is we still don't have an email for internet. We don't have an ubiquitous use case for web3. That email became for internet. That's what we're focusing on. Can we develop something that every single person on planet earth would be interested and benefit from if they engage with? And if you have legs, and if you can take steps, you know, you can engage with sweat economy. And I think we're on the right path there. The other thing that I would say is that if you actually look at the overall web3, and all the different tokens that exist, I see right now only three use cases or three classes of tokens that can be explained in a very simple fashion. Why on earth do they have value? Case one, Bitcoin digital gold, inflationary protection. It's capped supply. Everyone is paying attention to it. Everyone is in because of the first mover advantage. Therefore, it is playing the role of digital gold and probably is replacing gold as that inflationary protection asset. Case two, layer ones, computers securing asset ownership on the internet. Like electricity powers computers, like tokens, like ETH, like NEAR, like Avax, like MATIC. You need to have them in order for these computers to work for you and secure ownership of assets. And case three is tokenization. And here there is kind of wide range. The most simple one is tokenizing fiat currency, USDT, USDC. Basically, you are turning an asset that already exists into a token to make it more liquid, easier to transfer, easier to exchange with a lot more censorship resistance and with fewer parties being able to tell you can you or cannot you conduct this particular transaction. And there is a lot of experimentation with other assets like TDELs, for example, kind of tokenizing them. And we are pushing absolutely boundaries of that because we're not tokenizing an asset that already exists, that already has markets that can be exchanged. We're creating new asset class because as I said, everyone agrees that physical activity has value. It should have been an asset, but actually without blockchain, it cannot be turned into an asset. And we are creating new asset, new asset class, and the whole new industry that cannot be created without blockchain participating in this.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1248. Coinbase Stablecoin Master Plan Revealed!
"All right you guys don't want to miss this one. It is gonna be breaking down what is in store for stablecoins but also what is happening on more of a global footprint. There's a lot of things happening around the G20 that may have some influence on the crypto markets I think in a long -term scenario and we're gonna break all that down for you today. I think you'll like it. My name is Paul and this is the topic of an alternative stablecoin and what that might look like. This was FX Street kind of coming in on CEO Brian Armstrong talking about stablecoin hot take. This is the whole idea around flatcoin. He mentioned this I'll show you the video here in a second but basically he told Yahoo Finance basically in an interview that the next iteration of stablecoins, flatcoin, is on the horizon for the exchange. Now the point is will and are exchanges like Coinbase really going to focus in on this? And one of the things that I think is interesting here is the fact that we're seeing Coinbase move in this direction almost in unison and lockstep with what's happening in DC. And a lot happening this month most likely we'll have a house vote on stablecoins and it's very possible we could get some regulatory clarity. So I think they are queuing up for it. I want to say they meaning Coinbase queuing up for it. Remember they recently listed that they were doing and or going to list PayPal stablecoin on the exchange as well. So the idea behind these flatcoins is kind of interesting. There was a video here on this. Let me just jump over here to this video real quick. And this is where he kind of breaks it down but listen in to what he had to say. And so what would it look like to have a better form of money in the crypto space? Well it'd be something that's decentralized and maybe tracks CPI. So CPI is the consumer pricing index. It essentially has a basket of goods underlying it. Things that people spend their money on. You know a place to live, transportation, commodities like you know food and energy and wheat and you know copper things like that. And so we actually that is a good property of money. We want our money to preserve its purchasing power. All right so I'm gonna stop it there. Want our money to preserve purchasing power and the idea around tracking this against things like the consumer price index which is highly connected to inflation in general. And I think you know there are some interesting scenarios that maybe play into this for what they're trying to do. And I and I would agree with what Brian is talking about. Now remember this video that he just did was the ideas that they were trying to get behind. These are the ideas that they feel should be in the marketplace and would support. And they had a whole line list of ten different great ideas that you know Coinbase didn't have time to build everything. So it's something that I think a lot of markets are now starting to understand maybe how this connects to more of a global aspect. A couple other points you know to kind of hit within this. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also said the company is working on the next generation version of Stablecoin and that there may be a new SEC chair by 2024. So he's definitely maybe maybe either that's wishful thinking or you know something else. But they're also talking about donating to a presidential candidate who supports cryptocurrency. I think right now with Ramaswamy he's probably the one that most likely will be maybe a candidate that could go in that direction along with RFK juniors. So there's there's some interesting political scenarios playing into that. And when you think about political you know and how that plays into it you have to look on the global scale of things. But I look at Coinbase also just in their current size because Coinbase I think is one of those you know kind of the tail that wags the dog kind of companies. And if you look at just where they are currently there's just your recent data. This is their Coinbase revenue and usage stats for 2023. There's a lot here. I mean first of all Coinbase expecting to get revenue around 7 .3 billion in 2023 which is a significant increase of 2 billion just in Q2 of 2021. That's a very big jump in a market in which has been almost a full bear market since 2021. So that's a big deal. Also in terms of user stats let me kind of zoom in on that for you guys projected to have around 150 million verified users by the end of 23. Now the reason I think that's important is when you look at what happened with PayPal we talked about this if you haven't watched our PayPal video go check it out because PayPal has around 450 million users another 50 million Venmo users. So 500 half a billion people but only a small fraction of that might use the PayPal stablecoin versus if you look at Coinbase projecting 150 million verified users by the end of 2023. That is a much more captivated audience because I would say for anybody that's on Coinbase most likely you're probably talking in excess of 50 to 60 percent that are holding stablecoins and especially right now where Coinbase is rewarding USDC holding with a high percentage of yield interest that's being paid. So when you think about that the size of the market then all of the implications that rolls into the global spec of things and then the size of Coinbase themselves and the number, remember they're a global company and they're growing and continuing to grow outside the US, could become very interesting for what is going to happen around the stablecoin market. Another factor that you might want to look at is what's happening with the European Central Bank this week ahead of the ECB taking center stage as the euro is obviously dealing with some challenges here. A couple of things I wanted to look at. Problem for the euro is interest rate differentials even though the Fed is expected to hold rates steady later this month and the ECB is expected to squeeze in another hike when it meets on Thursday next week. The interest rate differential between the German and the US one -year bond or yield is around 1 .8 percent. This is a problem for the future of what is happening in the European Union and I think this is also playing out globally. Now why is this interesting or important around stablecoins? Because if stablecoins start to become a regulatory product and become very active within the financial system we're gonna start seeing a lot of countries adopting the use case for stablecoins which will only cause massive growth. Now you look at other major Western countries. Let's take a look at Canada.
SI Media Podcast
A highlight from The Debut of NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube
"Welcome everyone to SI Media with Jimmy Traina. I am your host, Jimmy Traina. Thank you so much for listening. Bonus episode, bonus podcast on this Monday after the first Sunday of the NFL season. We had the debut of NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube. It was on DirecTV for like 25 years. Now it's on YouTube. And Sal Licata, who joins me every week for Train of Thoughts from WFAN in New York and SNY TV in New York, joins me where we share our experiences with Sunday Ticket on YouTube, getting it set up, what we thought of it, full review, full breakdown of everything, what you need to know about it, what their differences are if you have YouTube TV, if you have cable, full breakdown of everything all related to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube. That's what this pod is with Sal. It's like a full -blown Train of Thoughts. So listen to Sal and I discuss it, come back later in the week for a regular episode. If you missed any recent episodes, check them out. Last week, Julian Edelman was on. He was great. Just joining Fox had some great Brady and Belichick stories. Charles Barkley was on recently, Peter Schrager, Chris Russo. Check all those pods out. Subscribe to SI Media with Jimmy Traina. And this is one of two episodes this week. All right, let's get to it now with Sal. Full episode here on NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube. All right here right now on SI Media with Jimmy Traina. Welcome everyone to SI Media with Jimmy Traina. Thanks for listening. Bonus episode this week. This will be one of two. We're taping this on Monday after the first week of the NFL season, the debut of the new Sunday Ticket on Yahoo, on Yahoo. What a dope. On YouTube, on YouTube, I had to get on with Sal and we're just gonna riff about our Sunday Ticket experiences in week one. Sal, how are you? I'm great and I'm excited to have this conversation with you because we've had this many times over the years at dinner, at our houses, whatever, discussing this exact thing. And we both, I know, had great experiences yesterday. So I'm looking forward to talking about it with you. Well, let's start with this. There are many, many train of thought segments on this podcast over the last three months where you said you were not going to get Sunday Ticket. You were not going to get it. You're just focusing on the New York teams. And then I got the text message. Let's see here if I can find the text message. Even, even early, I noticed you were starting to cave a little bit earlier this week. Actually, 9 .34 a .m. on Sunday, I'm still on the fence. And then at 10 .45 a .m., the text came in from Sal. I'm in. It's like Michael Jordan returning to the NBA. I know. I thought about writing to you. I'm back. I was thinking about it as the week went on. I told you, like, because of the lineup with the playing Giants Sunday and the Jets playing Monday, that to me made it worse. Or you were saying, oh, well, you're going to have the national games. Yeah. But knowing that I didn't have to watch those games at that time made it more appealing for me to get the get the Sunday ticket. So I kind of thought I'd be going that way. And then Sunday morning I was like, fuck it. Let me just get this thing in. It's worth the money. Let me see what it's all about. And is it great. So so let me do a little preamble here before we get into it, because I want to say this and let me know if you agree, disagree. But before we even discuss this, I think what we need to establish is this. How you feel about Sunday ticket, whether it's direct TV, YouTube, the changes or it's it's going to depend on how you watch football, number one, and it's going to depend on what services you have. Now, for instance, Sal has direct TV. I have I don't have direct TV. Oh, oh, you have optimum cable. Correct. OK. Optimum cable. You were scamming the direct TV Sunday ticket all these years. That's right. All right. I did have direct TV. Right. And this is an important part of it. I don't want to gloss over it. And then I moved into the city and I was not allowed to get direct TV. So what they did was allow me to stream Sunday tickets. So I have been able to stream Sunday ticket for several years. So whether you have optimum like Sal, I have Verizon, Fios. Some people have direct TV. Some people don't have any cable. They have streaming services. That's a factor in all this. And then the other thing that I think added so much confusion over the last couple of weeks and is early yesterday there's also this huge Sunday ticket is different based on whether you have YouTube TV or you're just using YouTube. Now, Sal and I both have cable, so we're just using YouTube. If you have YouTube TV, the experience is different. So there's a lot of layers to this. It's very convoluted. I'm going to do my best to try to break it down for you now. So the biggest thing is this. If you have YouTube TV, you're good to go with Sunday ticket with your in -market and out -of -market games. You have nothing to worry about. If you don't have YouTube TV, like Sal and I, you're not getting the local market game. So on Sunday here in New York, Steelers, Niners was on Fox at one o 'clock. Browns, Bengals was on CBS at one o 'clock. Those games are not part of our Sunday ticket packages on YouTube. If you have YouTube TV, they were. So if you don't have YouTube TV and you just have YouTube, you have to have more than one television. I think if you want to watch all the games, if you care about one team, you're fine. You really do need to have two TVs because what I did was I had on my big TV, the multi -view with the four games. And on the second TV, I had one of the local games because that's how you have to do it. So, so far I weigh in on what I've said so far. Yes. Okay. Question here. Number one, if I had YouTube TV, do I then get the local games as part of the game mix? Yes. Oh, shit. See, so I may consider then, I don't know if I'm realistically going to do it, but that to me is like the number one thing that's been missing forever on the prior service. And now that I cannot have, because like you, I like to have the game mix and the four box grid, but it automatically takes out whatever local game is on. And I hate that. So here in New York, we could not get a four game multi -view that had either Steelers Niners or Browns Bengals in it on Sunday. Cause those are in market games. So there was no multi -view whether it was four games, three games that had those games in it. If you had YouTube TV, those games were part of the multi -view. So you, so you, so you would consider getting rid of optimum and getting YouTube TV. Well, I didn't know that that was the case. I mean, I probably, truth be told, I'll never be a cord cutter, but if I were to get it in addition, it might be worth it at least just for the season. Now I screwed up because I bought the ticket. Although I guess you have this period now where it's kind of, um, you know, the tree trial period and I can make a decision at the end of the week, but, uh, I'd rather than go back and get the ticket much cheaper if you buy YouTube TV, I think. Right. You know, YouTube TV is like $80 a month. It's like a cable service.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from BREAKING: China to Reverse Bitcoin Ban?! | EP 816
"It's all going to zero against Bitcoin. It's going up for everyone. You're against Bitcoin. You're against freedom. Yo, welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live, our number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution of code breaking news culture and medic warfare. We will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Speaking of the separation of money and state, China seems to be reversing course. You wouldn't expect that. I mean, if you've been paying attention, they've been kind of dropping some little hints here and there. We know by some data collected by CNBC, I think it was Mackenzie Segalos who originally dropped the article, that it was estimated to be still 20 % of the Bitcoin hash rate is still located in China even after the China ban. And then the news from Hong Kong started coming out where Hong Kong seems to be trying to attract Bitcoin companies or Bitcoin and altcoin companies to set up shop in Hong Kong. And Hong Kong is a semi autonomous region. You know, supposedly it's a one country, two systems, but they have been cracking down a lot on freedom of speech and all that stuff over there. So they wouldn't be able to do this without Beijing's approval. And that that isn't just simply Bitcoin saying that there's articles that have said that Bloomberg has said that I know I know another publication has said this as well. So I don't think it's a coincidence that literally a couple months later, an article dropped out dropped originally in it was originally in Mandarin. And then Yahoo News published the article late at midnight, midnight today, and it says China court says virtual assets legally protected as properties. So you know, this 180 basically, we know that the CCP, who is, you know, the governing body of mainland China or the governing political party, they absolutely hate Bitcoin. They're all hell bent on pushing forward the central bank digital currency system with the social credit system, all that stuff, you know, like freedom money. But this is something that Alex Gladstein has written about where he wrote an article for Bitcoin magazine called Bitcoin is the Trojan horse for freedom. And he made the case that, uh, NGU technology and freedom enabling technology, they're inextricably inextricably linked. You can't separate the two. I see Afi Opti laughing in the background to my pronunciation. Sorry. Not sorry. Um, but I think this is a testament to Bitcoin's incentives. And even if you are from one of the most totalitarian countries in the world, um, you know, we always hear that a nai mukhelei is a danger to democracy, a dangerous democracy. We never hear that about China for some reason, we don't even have democracy, right? Um, so yeah, it's just, uh, it's, it's just interesting how Bitcoin's incentives are irresistible. And this is actually one of Opti's like famous lines, right? It's like, you can't ban yourself, uh, I forget, let me bring up Opti so that he could actually say the line. Opti, how do you say it? Uh, again, just to be clear, I didn't create this. I just propagate the meme, but you can't ban Bitcoin. You can only ban yourself from Bitcoin. Boom. Exactly. Right. So you can't ban Bitcoin. You can only ban your, uh, you can only, exactly. So, and then we see that with the hash rate, right? People are willing to go to jail on Bitcoin. That's so crazy. Right. Um, and then there are some numbers that were coming out of Binance that apparently it's like 20 % of the exchange volume is still coming out of China, right? So it's, it's, it's some absurd amount and this is Bitcoin's incentives. And this is something that we've been propagating. And this is something that we've been talking about for a very, very long time in the separation of money and stay in this process that we're all kind of living through these days is what they have is coercion. They coerce can people into using state money to using money that has control surveillance inflation built in, but Bitcoiners don't have to rely on coercion. We just have incentives. Our money has a better incentive structure. And I think that's why at the end of the day, we're going to win this thing eventually. The only question is how long is it going to take and how painful is it going to be? And that's just, that's the big question, right? Corey Clipsen from Swan wrote this amazing article, highly recommend it called the race to avoid the war. And he's talking about, we have to, we have to ruin the race. We have to get in a minority of people, an intransigent minority that's not willing to bend on a certain issue that is holding Bitcoiners, that's holding Bitcoin. And they're not willing to bend. They're just saying like, look, like I, this is, you know, like this is my wealth, this is my future, this is the money I decided to use. And then it becomes a voting issue, a policy issue that just doesn't move. The example that I would give for you guys is the gun lobby in the United States. Like look how hard it is to pass a gun, whether you agree with them or not, obviously you guys know we're Freedom Maxis. So I'm a big fan of the Second Amendment personally, but I respect people's different differing of opinions, of course.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from MARKETS DAILY: Crypto Update | Bitcoin Rallies on Grayscale Court Win Over SEC
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken and Simpliras. It's Wednesday, August 30th, 2023, and this is Markets Daily from CoinDesk. Hi, I'm Michelle Musso here with your crypto markets roundup. On today's show, we're talking Bitcoin, Grayscale Spot, Bitcoin ETF and more. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Bitcoin gained nearly 8%, topping $28 ,000 at one point on Tuesday afternoon, after a federal appeals court ruled that the SEC must review its rejection of Grayscale investments, attempt to convert its GPTC, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, into an ETF. We'll dive deeper into this story after the break, but first we'll look at markets. Just as it has been typical with such rallies for many months, crypto quickly gave back a chunk of those gains. Bitcoin was trading just under $27 ,400 this morning, still up more than 5 % over the past 24 hours. GPTC also saw its busiest trading session in 14 months with nearly 20 million shares, changing hands through the day. According to Yahoo data, this was the most since the June 2022 crypto market crash. Other movers included Bitcoin Cash, which has surged 15 % over the last 24 hours, and Stacks, a Bitcoin layer 2 protocol, was also a top gainer following the news, gaining 20 % on the day. DCG, the parent company of Grayscale, also owns CoinDesk. Bitcoin's price on Tuesday after weeks of slumber was caused by traders reacting to hopes of the long -contended Grayscale Bitcoin Spot ETF, getting approved in the U .S. While most market participants are rejoicing, some remain cautious about the optimism, draining out the current euphoria amongst loyalists. In a note to CoinDesk on Wednesday, a research analyst at Fincua International said, quote, Grayscale obtained the chance of seeing their filing reevaluated by the SEC as the causes of rejection did not seem fair to the judge. End quote. The analyst continued, quote, It doesn't mean that now Grayscale will be 100 % able to list a spot Bitcoin ETF, nor that this will happen in the future. End quote. The crypto market also received good news from the U .S. Labor Department's job openings and labor turnover survey, which showed vacancies dropped to the lowest level in over two years in July. The data diminished the attractiveness of the U .S. as a comparatively robust economy, eroding the rationale for ongoing Federal Reserve rate increases, consequently pushing down Treasury yields and the value of the dollar. The dollar index fell by nearly 0 .5 percent on Tuesday. Among the pivotal factors that triggered Bitcoin's mid -August decline were the strengthening U .S. resilience narrative, coupled with the subsequent rise in yields and the dollar index. While the degree to which the job survey contributed to Bitcoin's rise on Tuesday is not known, the report has created a supportive environment for risk assets for now.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
A highlight from Crypto Update | Bitcoin Rallies on Grayscale Court Win Over SEC
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken and Simpliras. It's Wednesday, August 30th, 2023, and this is Markets Daily from CoinDesk. Hi, I'm Michelle Musso here with your crypto markets roundup. On today's show, we're talking Bitcoin, Grayscale Spot, Bitcoin ETF and more. And just a reminder, CoinDesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Bitcoin gained nearly 8%, topping $28 ,000 at one point on Tuesday afternoon, after a federal appeals court ruled that the SEC must review its rejection of Grayscale investments, attempt to convert its GPTC, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, into an ETF. We'll dive deeper into this story after the break, but first we'll look at markets. Just as it has been typical with such rallies for many months, crypto quickly gave back a chunk of those gains. Bitcoin was trading just under $27 ,400 this morning, still up more than 5 % over the past 24 hours. GPTC also saw its busiest trading session in 14 months with nearly 20 million shares, changing hands through the day. According to Yahoo data, this was the most since the June 2022 crypto market crash. Other movers included Bitcoin Cash, which has surged 15 % over the last 24 hours, and Stacks, a Bitcoin layer 2 protocol, was also a top gainer following the news, gaining 20 % on the day. DCG, the parent company of Grayscale, also owns CoinDesk. Bitcoin's price on Tuesday after weeks of slumber was caused by traders reacting to hopes of the long -contended Grayscale Bitcoin Spot ETF, getting approved in the U .S. While most market participants are rejoicing, some remain cautious about the optimism, draining out the current euphoria amongst loyalists. In a note to CoinDesk on Wednesday, a research analyst at Fincua International said, quote, Grayscale obtained the chance of seeing their filing reevaluated by the SEC as the causes of rejection did not seem fair to the judge. End quote. The analyst continued, quote, It doesn't mean that now Grayscale will be 100 % able to list a spot Bitcoin ETF, nor that this will happen in the future. End quote. The crypto market also received good news from the U .S. Labor Department's job openings and labor turnover survey, which showed vacancies dropped to the lowest level in over two years in July. The data diminished the attractiveness of the U .S. as a comparatively robust economy, eroding the rationale for ongoing Federal Reserve rate increases, consequently pushing down Treasury yields and the value of the dollar. The dollar index fell by nearly 0 .5 percent on Tuesday. Among the pivotal factors that triggered Bitcoin's mid -August decline were the strengthening U .S. resilience narrative, coupled with the subsequent rise in yields and the dollar index. While the degree to which the job survey contributed to Bitcoin's rise on Tuesday is not known, the report has created a supportive environment for risk assets for now.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from MONEY REIMAGINED: A Rant | The Labyrinth of Digital Feudalisms Grip and the Quest for Intentionality
"You're listening to Coindesk's Money Reimagined with Michael Casey and Sheila Warren. Hello and welcome to Money Reimagined. I'm Michael Casey. This week, it's Sheila and I just doing what we do from time to time just to sort of do a bit of a roundup of what's going on and like get in each other's heads a bit. We are, of course, available. We can listen to us weekly on the Coindesk Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you've enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, we would really like to hear from you. If you didn't like our episode, you could also talk to us and you could email us to do so at podcasts .coindesk .com with the subject line of Money Reimagined. As always, there's just lots going on, Sheila. Maybe we can talk a little bit later about the ongoing saga that is Sam Bankman free. He's in jail now, of course, but he's now pled not guilty to his latest indictment. We had some news of Coinbase acquiring a stake in Circle, which has got people intrigued. Markets aren't looking so great. A bit of a weird, wild collapse in Bitcoin. And that's, obviously, a determinant of all sorts of other things. But look, you came on, I don't know, saw text messages from me before we started this. You were obviously in a bit of a mood, a bit angry about a few things. You just want to rant about a few things. And you talked about comparing the United States to Japan and maybe the regulatory framework in each country. I thought we can get you under that. But it got me thinking that maybe we should, and if we do these two -way things, the one -on -ones, that we should just have a section just called Sheila's Rant. And I'm trying to think about what - The Rant of the Week. The Rant of the Week. The Rant of the Week. There's always something to rant about. I could just like a now. I could bring a now BBC voice. It's time for Sheila Warren's rant. Sheila, rant away. She's like, over to you. Over to you. Please rant away, Sheila. But your rant, actually, I thought you were going to rant about, you know, the US v Japan. I was. But then you joined us and you started talking about problems with your Google connection on things that was actually undermining your ability to actually do things, which got me thinking that this is a perfectly good rant because it is a way to speak about the whole dependency on centralized platforms. Yes. Yeah. Let me let me just walk our listeners through the last hour of my life. So I have a new laptop. Yay me. Hooray. That's very exciting. And I was trying to do what I thought would be a fairly simple task of pairing my Bluetooth mouse with my new laptop, which you would think would just be a very simple click a couple of times and things are done. No, apparently not. So in the course of this, I restarted my laptop and now I don't have access to Google Chrome. I literally cannot use Google Chrome. I can't download it unless it comes from someplace, whatever this that bottom line is without Google Chrome. What the realization I was late to our recording today because without Google Chrome on my machine, I have to use my laptop, not my phone, because I have a mic and I have to plug it in whatever for a variety of reasons. I'm dependent on my laptop for our particular from any reimagined to record this podcast and between Apple and Google and their willingness to interface in some ways and not others, etc. And then throw in Zoom, which is where we do our recordings for the podcast. I wasn't able to access my Zoom account. So then I had to like back into my Zoom in a different way. And then I had to like reset a password. It was just like, you've got to be kidding me with this. But all of that, I think, Michael, just it's just emblematic of the problem that I think we talk about, even not as pointedly as this, but more generally on this show, which is we are beholden in ways we don't even realize. Like I'm at a point now where, thank goodness, I've got people on the back end working on figuring out how to get me Chrome. Yeah, you've got an army of people trying to. Well, I wish I had one person, but regardless, I've got someone helping me with this and it's going to figure it out on our IT support side. But without access to Chrome, I basically can't really do my job unless I'm on my phone, in which case if I work on my phone for too long, I'm just going to like lose my eyesight, which is a whole other issue. You know, it's just it's just we're beholden in ways we don't even understand, because when these things function, the point is that when these things function, we don't even realize how connected they are. I don't know that I deliberately set my Zoom account up to run through Google, but at some point I did that or someone did it for me is probably more likely what happened, to be very honest. But regardless, the whole thing just kind of falls apart. And yes, you can very deliberately choose. I'm very conscious about data person, right? I mean, we've talked about this many times. So I do tend to use different kinds of browsers for other things, this and that. But when it comes to kind of hyper efficient work product oriented things, like we just default to the big platforms because everyone else is on there. It's a lot easier. You can make different kinds of connections. We work in Google Docs, whatever it is, right? If those things don't function, the integrations are somewhat default. And if those don't function, your productivity takes a massive hit. But your ability, I think, to engage is really complicated. So this isn't so much about data capture and control. It's about the ability to actually engage online, engage digitally in a meaningful way, which is is not it's just it's so beholden to these gigantic entities. And I find that today I find it deeply irritating and annoying and frustrating. I want to throw my machine out the window. But as a general matter, it's highly problematic. Well, the two are related, right? Like it's not just that there's data capture going on. It's that they create such a level of dependency. Yes. And such an integration of all these other elements of your life that the data is all the more rich from their point of view and therefore valuable from their point of view. Right. So, I mean, it is all related. But yeah, there is this convenience of the network effect of everything tied together. The one that I often think about lately is what's happened to email. So we often talk about how, oh, at least email, right? SMTP, it's this independent protocol. And you can send an email to anybody on any email server anywhere. And then whatever client you're using, you're fine, right? Well, I'm not so sure about that anymore because everybody has Gmail, right? So many corporate accounts are now just Gmail accounts. It is so big that Gmail's spam filtering system will, if you happen to be from a smaller server, I mean, there's not really not many left. People have ProtonMail for privacy and there's a few Yahoo and a few others that are still there. But any of the little guys, any independent email provider, you're going to be interpreted by Gmail's spam server as spam and just pushed out into the... You're not going to get your stuff read because you're not using... So there's this backdoor way in which Google has created control of what we thought was at least an architecturally far more decentralized system. And that is problematic in addition to all of the other ways in which Google just sits there in the middle of our lives. When you're using Waze in your car, it's Google. If you've got Google Home, it's Google. And of course, we can say the same about Amazon with Alexa and Prime and AWS and everything else, but this is the reality. We've built these dependencies. In fact, as anybody who listened to last week's episode will now know, I'm actually in the middle of writing a book with Frank McCourt, as I said then. More information will come about what it's really going to be about, but maybe it's going to come out in a drip form because I'll just offer this little tidbit. I mean, I'm just in the process of working on a chapter to try to give it a little bit more context to what we mean in the book by this concept of being a subject or a vassal in a new modern form of feudalism, as opposed to being a citizen in a kind of a republic and a democracy. Given that our information system is fundamental to who we are as a society, like it's critical to democracy, it's critical to a free market. If that information system is so controlled by these powerful platforms and that they are using that data to then actually feed back on you to direct you to what to read and what to say and how to behave and all that behavior modification stuff, which by now is very well documented, by the way, then in effect, we've lost agency. We've lost our citizenship, right? So this goes into digital feudalism. And I think one of the ways to describe it is this, right? It's the same way that like, oh, you can't actually go to this part of the country unless the king lets you go there or this dependency on the say so of some powerful lord is very similar to, I think, what we're at here right now. And that's a cause for great concern. I completely agree. And I think what's really even more disturbing about it is unlike physical feudalism, right, where there are boundaries and markers and you physically could not cross. Here, it's very invisible. And so to your point about Gmail's ubiquity, I think most people know this, but I don't think people really realize that your domain name does not say anything about the corporate master behind the email account, right? So most companies, to your point in tech, do use a Google interface. And so they have their own domain name of their own company. It's going to be whatever .com or whatever .org or whatever it is. But that's all run on the back end by Google. It's a Google account. It's all a Google workspace. And that's very common in tech. And unless you're a competitor of Google, in which case you have your own interface that you're using, right? Microsoft being a great example of this. But regardless, I mean, there is almost complete capture of many parts of the ecosystem through that functionality, not to mention servers. AWS servers come up with some regularity. But the idea is that most companies are back ended into an AWS server. AWS is actually a bigger portion of Amazon's profit than Amazon, than the brick and mortar kind of the retail facing part. And you can imagine, given how often the frequency of how people use amazon .com to buy things, you can imagine if that's like a drop in the bucket compared to what AWS is making in terms of gross profit. It's pretty wild to think about that. But our entire digital infrastructure is really dependent in ways that when they break down, it's like, you have a day like I'm having today, it's really abundantly in your face and obvious how problematic that is. When it functions well, it's something that is pretty invisible in ways that I think regular feudalism, if you will, was pretty in people's faces. It was a pretty obvious system. This is invisible to a lot of people. You don't think about it until it breaks down. And when it breaks down, you're just annoyed about it and you're frustrated because you can't, like I'm a person who's incapable of not contextualizing things. But I think most people in my position today would just be very irritated and want to just fix it and move on without the reflection necessarily on what it means, right? Right. We were talking before about how this is actually very different from, say, a regular tool breaking down, right? This is not just getting a flat tire on your car and being annoyed with that. But I think most people will see it that way. They'll just go, oh, damn it. Yeah, it's a temporary problem. The dishwasher's got some problem with the detergent rinsing function and that's it, right? But no, it's actually a very clear reflection of the dependencies that we're talking about. I'm glad you mentioned Amazon because we should recognize this is not just one company, there are a few of them that have these particularly powerful roles. But I'm going to go back to Google because I was thinking as you were saying this, one of the ones that, like back in January, of course, there was the ruling from the Department of Justice that sued Google successfully for monopolizing digital advertising technologies. Right. And like, yes, now there's been a response to that, thankfully. But it's just the very fact that we've managed to create this system, I think is one of the most clearest reflections of this power, right? So, again, Google controls Chrome, Google is control search. And so every aspect of how we actually find things and therefore all of the ways in which every single website is incentivized through search engine optimization, which is a buzz word that we journalists have to deal with every single freaking day, SEO is designed to keep that Google algorithm happy. So we are shaping the way we design our content and curate our content specifically to keep Google happy. So that's on the content side. But how is our content monetized? Well, regardless of whether or not it is on Google, it's like, you know, like it's not just Google ads, but our own ads themselves have to really play through the sort of the big Google network. So our content enter ads because there's the Google ad exchange, which has a sort of a combination ad of network technology to actually broker that the amount of space that's taken up inside the whole real estate of the Internet by bringing the sell side components together with the buy side, right? You've got folks who are publishers trying to sell that space and you've got folks who want to buy media space. Google sits right in the middle of it because it's engineered this perfect ecosystem in which you have no choice but to sit in the middle of it. Why this isn't looked upon as something that is, I don't know, 10, 20 times worse than Standard Oil was or rubber barons and the thing that led to the antitrust movement and Teddy Roosevelt's very important laws at the turn of the century. It baffles me. We've never seen anything like this level of monopolistic control over our economy. Well, I think it is in part because a lot of it is, as we were discussing, it's somewhat invisible. People don't really realize the interconnections and the way that it kind of reminds me of this show 30 Rock, which probably most of us are familiar with. And there was this running joke of like the corporate map, right, of 30 Rock and who owned the studio and the fact that they owned like it was a microwave or whatever it was, but all rolled up to this one central company. And Alex Baldwin character, Jack Donaghy was his character, which joke a lot about the fact that everything rolled up to this one company and there are all these different things and they were all in the do product placement of the other kinds of parts of the company and whatnot. But when it comes to our online world, people just don't really they don't even understand the different things that go into making these services possible. Right. And how they all interconnect. And I also think that there is an element of just sort of embarrassment, like I think most people like I am beyond this in my personal life, but I'd say probably a decade ago when everything failed on my laptop like this morning, I would have been like, oh, my God, it's user error. I did something wrong. I messed it up. Now I'm like, no, no, it's not me because I'm sophisticated as an Internet user at this point. And I know what is me and what is a pepcak issue, as they say, problem exists between keyboard and computer. Right. And what is not. And I know this is not. But in many cases, people feel a level of tech illiteracy or embarrassment around it because they don't understand it. They don't they know they don't understand it. They don't really get it. There's nothing visual about it that you can really process. You just know it's not working and you feel an immediate. It's part of partially the addiction of it. You feel stress. You feel a tremendous amount of stress that you're not able to get this thing to function. And then you feel, I think, according with that embarrassment and shame. And this has been documented by many sociologists that when people's tech is not working, they feel shame and embarrassment in ways they don't feel when their microwave fails or they get a flat tire or whatever. They don't have that level of anxiety and shame around it, which they do. Right. Which they have when their online tools aren't working. It's another form of control in terms of like the trust us. We got this because we know don't get this. That differentiation is dividing divide. You don't understand this. You don't. And you can't trust. And you can't. Right. So we build up that even if you could easily just by building up that expectation that you can't by holding out these tech geniuses as sort of the lords of everything you can only only once you can get it. We build that expectation and therefore we ultimately lock ourselves into again, more dependency. I think that that's what I find even more challenging about this. Right. Just to take this out, go out even one more layer is when we think about how this is affecting a lot of the ways that elites think about education and not just elites, but really, but the way that the focus on technical mastery, being a coder, all this stuff is now considered the pinnacle of educational achievement in many ways. And there's some backlash against this around liberal arts education. You need to have other kinds of skills and talents and creativity, all these kinds of things that really matter. I think anyone who's been in tech for a long time will tell you that the EQ component is the thing that really makes or breaks a career in tech, not so much your technical ability or capacity to do things like code. Nevertheless, the emphasis on that, I think on the one hand, it's important to be competitive in the global economy. That is certainly an important thing. But the overemphasis I would say on it, it reinforces this concept. So as demographics get older, there's a sense that, well, I'm too old to understand this is too complicated for me. My oldest kid and I are watching the show called Avid Elementary. Highly recommend. It's phenomenal. I'm Avid rewatching Elementary. It's fantastic. 110 billion. I mean, we're going back and rewatching season one, and it's really funny. But there's an older teacher who's been teaching for many, many years. And there's an episode we just watched last night that's called something like tech or whatnot, new tech or something like that. And they bring in this tablets, right? And they're like, this is how you're going to teach the kids to read. They're going to use these tablets and you're going to do all this stuff. And the older teacher who's probably in her 40s or whatnot, she's not that old, but relatively speaking, she is like, I don't know how to do this. She just kind of like does an end run around the technology and winds up coding in that her kindergartners are reading it like fourth grade level. Okay. So of course there's an assembly and they want to pre it's really funny. It's a great episode. But part of it, I think she talks about having a hot male account, all this stuff. Right. But I was watching that and I was thinking about this idea that we have basically created a generation of people. We've kind of told them and shamed them into thinking that they are just not capable of understanding these technologies. And in countries, I think where you're getting older and older versus younger and younger, there's this kind of flip, right? This flip has happened where not only do we prize youth and vigor and all that kind of thing, but we also think there's something about their brains that makes them more capable of understanding how a computer works or how an online, which is just absolute nonsense. That's just completely untrue. It makes no sense whatsoever. If anything, the logic that underlies how a lot of these systems work is something that age and experience actually are helpful in comprehending, right? Because you understand systems, you can be a systems thinker, the older that you get. So I find all of this kind of cultural framing of tech and our dependence on tech equally challenging to how complicated tech itself is, which is not to say that tech is not complicated. It is to some extent, but it's not, it's not unparsable by anyone, frankly. We hit on something there that I think is really, and I do want to get to another quick rant before we go, because I got to run this out, but a different topic. But you said systems thinking, which I think is really important here because to me, the biggest insight that I think I've had, and I really do believe that being in the blockchain space has allowed me to think about these things, about what is wrong with this web two world, these centralized platforms is the business model, right? Is the idea that there are literally incentives amongst everybody to keep drilling down on this model and building out essentially a system of data extraction, this abusive manipulative system that we have, because it pays, because everybody's locked into that system. And I think one of the things that I find talking to my daughter sometimes about this is that she knows there's something big, bad, and wrong about this. And yeah, she gets tech as well, and she's comfortable using a whole range of technology, but she doesn't have that economic understanding. I don't think of business models of thinking through what's driving Wall Street. What's driving capital? Where is the actual profit motive that's driving all this? That is definitely something that you acquire as an older person. Right. And so in some respects, what you're talking about as well is a system that prevented those of us who have that knowledge, that EQ, that broader knowledge of systems from being able to then apply it to this model. Oh, it's tech. I can't. I couldn't. You know what? How could I possibly? You would see the same old stuff that we've seen for years that drives business decisions that leads to these extractive, broken systems. That's kind of where the book's going to be all about, by the way. Anyway, look, the segue I'll try to pull off here is, of course, I thoroughly believe we need not just blockchain technology, but a range of other decentralizing mechanisms that will require perhaps some centralization as well, but to redesign this whole thing. And that's where the policy challenges come into place because we really need to be thinking creatively about enabling these technologies to develop in the right environment to emphasize what's leading centralization. And of course, you've been looking at different models around the world and the U .S. is really lagging. And I keep writing about it. And so now we've got Japan somehow strangely leading the way over here. Well, that was my original rant. So I just got back from family vacation in Japan, 11 out of 10 recommend. Phenomenal. It was really amazing, even with the really little kids. And part of the reason it was so incredible is just the infrastructure. And so not only I immediately noticed a couple of things since my last trip, which was in 2019, which is a work trip. A, the transit system has gotten even more efficient and effective, which is remarkable considering in the United States, our transit is just, I mean, infrastructure bill and all that, but that's a long time coming. And oh, my God, that's a whole battle. It's going to be fought and how that all gets implemented. But, you know, grateful for at least a step in the right direction. But also the accessibility, just the way that accessibility is modeled into urban design is something I just found remarkable. And I live in San Francisco, and we're pretty thoughtful about these things here. But it is my kids were asking, like, oh, why is there this thing there? Why is this thing over here? Why is there the sound or why is there this bumpy thing in the road or whatever it is? I was like, that's all for people who are visually impaired. And it's just built into urban design in a way that I found remarkable. I don't think I've seen that as prominently a feature of urban design anywhere else. My co -author Frank McCourt will be loving, I mean, he's going to get into this next episode. He'd be loving to hear this because this is this idea about building architecture with people in mind. Right. As opposed to the company that runs things. It's truly human centered. Right. And part of that look is the demographics in Japan. We talked about demographics. And the Internet was built for machines, not humans. This is one of the problems. That's exactly right. So looking at AI, for that matter, is built as a tool to help make machine learning. Right. So just put there, leave it there and say what you will. I think, though, that there is a demographic thing there. There are older people in Japan. It's an older demographic. There are fewer and fewer children being born in Japan to the point that the government's providing incentives for people to actually have more children to kind of try to alter and adjust the demographics. So there's a real practical need for this. But imagine if this were the default in everywhere in the world. It should be. There's really no reason. And I looked a little bit, because I'm a nerd, into the kind of cost structure behind all of that. And it's marginal. It's negligible if you do it from the beginning and do it intentionally. So I've always loved Japan. I used to run an office in Japan and have major Japanese colleagues in my last role. And we, of course, have engaged in Japan at CCI as well, because to your point that you were making earlier, it is quite robust and thoughtful in how it's thinking about crypto regulation in ways that I find very impressive, especially around NFTs and stablecoin as well. But regardless, I hadn't been there as a tourist and as a regular person in quite some time. And it was just a remarkable experience. And I can't say that I came back overly impressed by the American offerings in these areas like infrastructure and accessibility, which I have not been historically, but I was even more deeply unimpressed when I was faced with the parallel option of what could be, with a little bit of imagination, a little bit of political... I'd love to really understand some of the aspects of Japanese culture that makes this sort of instinctive recognition of building for use and for humans so automatic almost, because there's one little example that I just thought was so fascinating. If you walk through the streets of Tokyo and look down, I don't know if it's right across the city, but certainly in a number of them, you'll see manhole covers sometimes in the city, which one has its own little design with colors and artwork in it. Somebody decided that it would be of interest to the society to have artwork that was differentiated across each of the manhole covers. That's a unique thing to decide to do. And it's a lovely thing to decide to do. It brings a whole new experience to being walking outside and looking down and being part of the environment that you're in, right? It's fascinating. It's something really quite magical about that capacity. Look, Japan's got lots of problems as well. Yeah, no culture, no countries, but on an infrastructure level, it was really hard to argue with the manifestation of a vision that really did put people and their needs at the center of the plot. You know, there's a place called the Shibuya Crossing, which is the biggest intersection in the entire world. It's got the most foot traffic of any intersection, apparently, in the entire world. And so we, of course, my kids wanted to see that and they wanted to cross it multiple times and whatnot. It just functions. It just functions. And you look across a city like that and you think about what that would look like in many other cities in the world. And suffice to say, it's not the same experience. Just not the same experience, right? It's organized. Part of that's cultural. Part of that is a cultural politeness, which has its own challenges, right? I'm not here to say that. I'm not here to laud any particular aspect of that or anything else. I think there's individualism is not as highly prioritized that has its own challenges. But nevertheless, just from a straight up urban infrastructure perspective, it was pretty hard to argue with how it functioned, how it was maintained, how efficient it was. All of those things I found not only admirable, but really compelling. And so coming back, I have to say, you know, I'll be in D .C., New York and San Francisco and none of those cities, I'm sorry to say, have anything to compete with that with what you've got on offer. So there you have it. That was actually less of a rant and more of a kind of a bit of a wistful observation. Yeah. And a little bit of an acknowledgement, a love song, if you like, almost to Japan, which is I mustn't say I love the place, the food. I love going to those little cocktail bars where the guy will spend like, you know, 10 minutes gently stirring you a martini. There's something very, really unique about it. All right. I'll wrap up there. Hopefully, this meandering conversation has actually landed in a place that our listeners found useful. Hopefully, it'll lead to people thinking a little bit more about intentionality. When I think about Japanese culture, the number one thing that comes up to me is intentionality and intentionality and how we engage online, intentionality and how we engage with each other, intentionality and how we build in our infrastructure, both digitally and physical. All of those things, I think, can only benefit us as a society. And I just don't know that that is a, I think the intentionality is there in our digital environment based out of the US, but it is intentionality to your point around a particular business model, which is not one that necessarily puts people and their needs and their desires at the center of anything. Well, the connection between the two ideas is the physical infrastructure into Japan being built with its intentionality to humans. And we need to really start to think heavily about the infrastructure of the internet, our infrastructure digital being built with humans in mind. And that is a major challenge that every one of us needs to be confronting right now. Okay. Let's leave it at that. We didn't get to talk about Stan Bankman Friedman, talk about Bitcoin price. Those of you who are looking for that, read Coindesk. There's loads of great material on that, as always, because it's the one stop shop for all of this vital employment information. A little bit of a housekeeping note for everybody, since I am writing a book, just so you all know, those of you who are subscribers to my newsletter that comes to the same name, Money Reimagined, thank you for doing so. Unfortunately, I'm putting on a hiatus for a little while. So if you're not getting in there wondering where it is, it will be back. But I need to kind of get this book project done. The podcast will continue every week. Don't worry. This is Sheila and I doing this. We're never going to stop, Sheila. This will go on to where like, I don't know, 105 years old. I'll be dialing in from, you know, wherever I need to dial in from when I'm 80. We're hopefully not a Google Chrome problem at that time. But otherwise, yes, just stick with us. It's great to have you around. And if you do have anything to say about this episode or any other ones, of course, you can reach us at podcasts at coindesk .com. Subject line Money Reimagined and certainly, you know, tell it to all your friends, subscribe. You can listen to us weekly here on the Coindesk Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Bye. Bye.
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep356: Never Run Out Of Content Ideas Again
"Why is podcasting the future? Why is podcasting important? Why is podcasting good? Why podcasting is used? Why are podcasts effective? Why are podcasts great? And there's just dozens and dozens of these questions. Most hosts never achieve the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. Hey, what's up, podcaster? It is Adam A. Adams, and we are going to be talking about a way that you can do better with marketing and just coming up with content for your podcast. And there is a resource. It is completely free. It's called AnswerThePublic .com. And guess what? The show notes have that link already in them. I've had my team make sure that the link is already there so you can scroll down and you can click on AnswerThePublic from your phone or from your computer, and you'll be able to check this out. I'm going to go over it a little bit with you and give you some tips and tricks. So, for example, you want to start out finding out what are people looking for. And so there's basically a couple of fields. I think they're called fields. But now I'm thinking about a green field, not actually second -guessing myself. That's OK. So AnswerThePublic .com is a search tool to help you figure out what you can do for marketing or for content. And when you first go to it, you see there's someone smiling with giant smile. And it just says, discover what people are asking about. And what you'll do there is you put in your brand or a topic like, I'll go ahead and put in podcasting, OK? Podcasting. All right, I've typed that in. And then I put in where I am located and I'm going to say the United States. And I'm going to say what language I speak. And I'm going to click on English. Now I'm going to search. And it's thinking, it's thinking, it's thinking. And now all of a sudden it's coming up with a bunch of results. And in fact, in just a few seconds, it came up with 649 results. Now, I don't want to worry about all 649. There's a whole bunch of different things that propagate or should I say generate. There's a whole bunch of different things that come up when you type that in. And one of them is 96 different questions that people are asking. Another is prepositions, 96 different ones. Comparisons, 66. Alphabeticals, 376. And then related was 15. So I scroll down to start seeing the questions. And what comes up is a wheel. It looks like a wheel with 96 spokes of different questions. How to podcast intro, how to make a podcast, how to put podcasts on Spotify, how to make money through podcasts. How do podcasts make money? How podcasting works. It is podcasting free. There's so many searches and it basically puts the highest ranking ones in certain places and it separates them. So all of the can you do this in podcasting is in one place. How do I do this is in another place. Whose are in another place. So like who invented podcasting, who started podcasting, who is podcasting popular with, who owns podcasting, who runs podcasting, and then you've got like the where's, where is it headed, where to find it on my iPhone, where can I start a podcast? And then I've got the what's. What podcasts are on Spotify? What podcasts are on Amazon? What podcasts are on Sirius XM? And I've got the why. Why is podcasting the future? Why is podcasting important? Why is podcasting good? Why podcasting is used? Why are podcasts effective? Why are podcasts great? And there's just dozens and dozens of these questions. I'm throwing out random ones that I see. I'm not necessarily picking the best ones right now. And you can pay a little bit if you want to get more, but you've got a free trial and you can't even see all 96 questions or however many come up for your industry. You can't even see all, all of them unless you pay. But for free, I've got about half of them, more than half. I got 53 out of 96. So kind of cool. And what it is, is it, they know what people are looking for when they're going to search engines, let's call it Google. They know what happens when people go to Yahoo and Google and Bing and other places like that, because they track it and then they put it all in one place and they make a tiny bit of money on it, but you don't have to spend money. There are free ways to utilize this great tool. So I just wanted to tell you a little bit about Answer the Public at answerthepublic .com. The link is already in the show notes. And hopefully you can check it out on whatever subject that you do for your company or for your podcast or for your YouTube channel, go to answerthepublic .com, try it, plug in whatever topic you're looking for. I'm going to do one more in thought leadership. I'm going to put in thought leadership and I'm going to push enter. And just like what happened before, it will generate some new questions that I can look at when considering what content to produce for you, because I know what people are looking for. So this can be very helpful, whatever genre you are in, whatever genre your podcast is in, whatever genre your business is in, and that's going to let you make more ads, advertisements, content, reels, stories, posts on social, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So please utilize that tool at least once take a good screenshot of it. And a secondary hack, like a Ninja strategy is to do this in incognito window that basically hides your IP. So I'm going to do that again. I'm going to go to answerthepublic .com. I'm in an incognito window. I'm going to put in thought leadership enter, and that might help you to do this more than once. So get rid of your cookies, your IP, whatever, or spend, I think it's like a buck or two. It's not expensive if you have to start using it. So remember do it in an incognito window if you can. And if you know how to do that, if you can figure out how to do that, do it. And if not, at least take a screenshot of the wheel the first time you do it. It's not going to let you see all of the questions for free. It showed me 56 out of 96 or 53 out of 96, something like that. I don't remember now. But just with one search use that it's called answer the public, the links in the show notes, and I'll see you on the next episode. This is serious. Don't go now that you've gotten whatever value that you feel that you've got the actionable takeaways. You need to implement the stuff that you learn. If you remember me talking about bird church once and they learn how to fly and then they walk home, I don't want you to walk home. I want you to fly home. So take the steps, take the actionable steps for your benefits that you can become a better podcaster. That's the only thing that I ask of you. And I'll see you for more actionable tips on the very next episode.
The Café Bitcoin Podcast
A highlight from Bitcoin Privacy and Security with Craig Raw, Sparrow Wallet - August 9th, 2023
"Hello, and welcome to the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the best way to buy and learn about Bitcoin. I'm your host, Alex Danson, and we're excited to announce that we're bringing the Cafe Bitcoin Conversations Twitter Spaces to you on this show, the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast, Monday through Friday every week. Join us as we speak to guests like Michael Saylor, Len Alden, Corey Clifston, Greg Foss, Tomer Strohle, and many others in the Bitcoin space. Also, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Make sure you get notifications when we launch a new episode. You can join us live on Twitter Spaces Monday through Friday, starting at 7 a .m. Pacific and 10 a .m. Eastern every morning to become part of the conversation yourself. Thanks again. We look forward to bringing you the best Bitcoin content daily here on the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast. All right, all right. Good morning to all of you Cafe Bitcoiners out there. It is Wednesday, August the 9th, 2023. It's another amazing day in Bitcoin. Morning to Peter. Good morning, Terrence, Dombay, throwing you an invite, Jacob, all you in the crew, in the audience. I want to just shout out real quick, Terrence, the man in Bloomberg yesterday. Was it yesterday or today? Yesterday. Thank you. Congrats. Your star is rising. It's a it's an awesome it's an awesome bit, Terrence, you did you did a great job on point, well -spoken and, you know, concise. You really you're you're you're your interviews are getting better and better. Thank you so much. That practice helps. You practice for that? Doesn't seem like you seem very natural. I meant doing the interviews. Oh, getting reps or reputation, reputation. Yeah, got it. Yeah. Yeah, kind of in this one, I think I think you really I'm trying to I've only done a few and they're kind of spread out. So I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I think usually they ask you or tell you what they want you to talk about and they ask for like a summary. So you kind of that's good because it forces you to be very concise with like one sentence summaries of what the points you want to get across. And then they kind of pick. Yeah, I mean, you get like less than probably a minute worth of airtime or something like that or two minutes. And they're kind of like, yeah, yeah, this one was, I think, five, some minutes. Yeah, sometimes they're 10 minutes. Sometimes like the small ones can be an hour. But, you know, with the big ones, like whether it's Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg, I've done twice Yahoo Finance once. It's like five to 10 minutes, I think. What was awesome, Terrence, was when they asked you the question, you answered the question, but you also got to frame it how you wanted to frame it. And I thought your framing was great. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was trying to get across a specific point about, you know, I hate Hopium. So just trying to temper expectations and get people to still realize that long term, there's a rush of cash coming in, starting with once Bitcoin adoption happens or Bitcoin, sorry, spot Bitcoin ETFs are approved. It just want to be approved in the timeframe that Novogratz and Cathie Wood seem to be implying that it all happens at once in four to six months or whatever they were saying. So you don't think it all happens at once? It might happen all at once, but like, I would think that they would want to clean up crypto, meaning all the money laundering and wash trading a little bit first, but that's happening. Like, that's what people don't talk about. With the Chinese authorities going after Hobi, they recently talked about how there's a lot of bad stuff happening, let's just say, in crypto and blockchain and DeFi. So with that, and then the U .S. also going after Coinbase and others and Binance, it seems like some of the stuff, you don't even need like the cases to be resolved or anything. You just need to make some more progress and kind of get these Chinese exchanges in particular, I would say, to change their behavior, do less wash trading and bullshit so that when retail comes in and when BlackRock and Fidelity and Vesco get their ETFs approved, which will happen, I think, it's just a matter of time, then that will lead to a rush of adoption, new adoption. But it's not going to happen in four to six months. It might take a year, year and a half, something like that.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Gospel Professed Pt. 2
"I'm going to continue tonight in our study that I've entitled, The Evangelism Revolution. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to the book of Acts. Just briefly, I'll just summarize where we're at so far. From last week, we just began a brief introduction, but as you go through the book of Acts and I guess you could call it, called The Gospel in Acts, I believe it's going to be on our website and it might be in the Yahoo groups as well. It is on the website. You can get that. I'll be referring to that in the next week or two, but it just kind of gives you some of the results of the survey of going through almost every place in the book of Acts where the Gospel is being presented. Sometimes it's only summarized, sometimes it's given explicitly, and it shows what aspects of the Gospel were presented in each presentation. Some were emphasized, the response, the audience, and it gives just an overall view of how the Gospel was advanced throughout the book of Acts. And I think it's beneficial. It's certainly been really what has caused me to see some of these things that I have been sharing with you throughout this series. Last week, though, we began with the subject of baptism, and we saw that baptism was an integral part of evangelism in the first century. When they heard the Gospel and when they received the Gospel, they didn't say a prayer to receive the Gospel. Instead, throughout these examples, they were baptized, having given evidence of believing in the Gospel. That baptism really became the profession or the confession of their faith, so that they believed, and then the text says they were baptized. That's very important, as I hope by the end you will agree with me, that baptism in the book of Acts is primarily, if not exclusively, portrayed as a confession of faith, a profession of acceptance of faith, a believing. Implicit, I think, throughout the book of Acts is that belief was necessary for baptism. They wouldn't just baptize anybody. You'll see that there is this implicit undercurrent throughout the book that belief in the Lord Jesus Christ was necessary for baptism. And this comes out very strongly in a couple of places. I would invite you, first of all, to turn to Acts chapter 8. In Acts chapter 8, it is the story of the Ethiopian who is reading through the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 53 to be exact, and Philip comes along and Gospels him, tells him the good news about Jesus, it says in verse 35, he opened his mouth and he began from the Scripture, he preached Jesus. What's interesting is I'd like to read verses 36 through verse 38, and as they went along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, Look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? And Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. Clearly this particular passage of Scripture shows that belief in the Lord Jesus Christ was for necessary baptism. I'll share with you just a bit of... I want to be honest with you, verse 37 there is in my Greek Bible, it's not even there. It goes from verse 36 and it goes straight to verse 38, because verse 37 isn't in most of the earliest manuscripts, Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament. They appear much later in some of the older, newer versions or newer copies of the New Testament. That's why my New American Standard Bible has it in brackets. How do we answer that? Well, I think the answer that I heard Alistair Begg share was probably one of the most helpful analogies for me. If verse 37 isn't there, clearly we still see that baptism is a very significant part evangelism of the that's going on here. Verse 36 is in all the earliest manuscripts and, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? Verse 38, and he ordered the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. Whether that verse 37 is in the earliest or the original manuscript, I'm not sure, but I think one thing it shows is that even the copyist, even the scribes at a very early year in the development of the church understood that this would be an important aspect and very likely could have made a comment on the side of a text or whatever, but it represents a very early belief in the church that, as a matter of fact, belief was required for baptism. Now, where there might be a textual variant here that may cast some shadow on it, if you turn over just a few chapters to Acts chapter 10, there is no textual variant here and it is a very clear, implicit reference that belief was necessary for baptism. Peter is speaking to the house of Cornelius and it says, verse 46, For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God. Then Peter answered, verse 47, Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did. And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay on for a few days. Peter raises a question, I mean, who could prevent us from baptizing? These people have obviously displayed that they are born again, that they believe. How could we withhold baptism from that? I mean, the other side of the coin would be, well, if they weren't sincere believers or they didn't believe, then we could prevent them from being baptized, but who could prevent us now? Now these people obviously believe the Holy Spirit, we've seen this gift of tongues upon them and so he had them ordered to be baptized. As we look at baptism in the book of Acts, I really do believe that it is a radical, if not revolutionary discovery of not only the gospel, but baptism itself. Jesus ended His earthly ministry commanding His disciples, go and make disciples, baptizing them. And the way that's set up in Matthew 28 is the command is make disciples and baptizing them is telling you how to do it. It's a participle that comes underneath there, go make disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son. So we have that command in Jesus. The book of Acts follows it in many ways, I think it tells us how then we baptize. So I do believe that what we find in the book of Acts is authoritative. And what we find in the book of Acts is that when the gospel is preached, it's not received by saying a prayer. In the book of Acts, it is believed and then it is professed by baptism. And that is radical, that is revolutionary today. We had an elder meeting a week or so ago, and as the elders were talking, there was the confession, the admission, that as we look at what the gospel is, as we look at the contents, as we look at how the gospel is preached and how it is received and how baptism plays all this, it was said in our meeting, this is challenging us, that we're having to work through a bunch of things. What is this going to mean in the life of our church? What does it mean in our theology? It's challenging us in the traditions that many of us, most of us, have inherited from our evangelical heritage. Well, I've marked three areas in particular that this model that we get from the book of Acts really challenges us. Two of them challenges us as a church very directly. So let me just begin with the first area where I think this teaching on baptism really challenges our church. Very clearly in the book of Acts, number one, we see that there is an emphasis on baptism that is not present today in the church. In the first century, there was a very strong emphasis on baptism. It was commanded by Jesus all throughout the book of Acts, time and time again. Again, they believed and they were baptized. Mass baptisms, 3 ,000 were baptized, then 2 ,000 were baptized. It was repeated time and again. It would be a complete anomaly, a total departure of the norm to have a person in the first century profess to be a Christian and not get baptized. That would have been unheard of, impossible. I don't know if I'm quoting anyone, I've read so much on this, or I've just formatted this opinion. I put it in quotation marks, but I don't know who to credit it to, so here it goes, but I believe there are more unbaptized, professing Christians in the church today than any other time in history. Many people professing, oh yeah, I got saved at Billy Graham Crusader, I walked the aisle, never been baptized. Today, even in Baptist churches, there's no emphasis upon baptism. John MacArthur and I alluded to it last week, and I think we have a few handouts there in the back, preached a sermon in 1998. I think we put that on our website today. I just want to quote a paragraph from his observation, baptism is not a particularly popular subject today, it's not of great interest in the evangelical community. It's been years since I've seen any new book written on baptism or any book emphasizing baptism or any series of messages or any preacher or any teacher emphasizing baptism. I never hear about it on the radio, I never hear about it on Christian radio, I never see a baptism on Christian television programs. Though you have a lot of services, you rarely, if ever, see a baptismal service. The interest in baptism has sort of gone away, sad to say in many cases. 1998, six years ago, John MacArthur had already said, there's a problem in the church today. There's no identity with baptism. It's been relegated to something that we may do or may not do, and it's kind of in the back. Totally opposite of the first century. In the first century, Christianity was all about baptism. That's how you made your profession of faith. What has happened today? In the last fifty to a hundred years, we have substituted the prayer for baptism. That's what has happened in the church today. The prayer has taken the place of baptism. You know, the messages that I've been preaching, particularly on the gospel, if I were to preach those in a majority of churches today, I'd be ran out on my ear. They wouldn't want to hear that. If I said the things that I've been saying about the sinner's prayer, not saving anyone, and it not being the gospel, you would see people's blood pressure rise. You would see them get flushed in the face. You wouldn't be invited back. This would be a very controversial topic in the church today, in Baptist churches today, in Bible -believing, preaching churches today. It would be extremely controversial. And yet, in most of those churches, rarely do they ever do baptisms, and rarely is anything ever said about baptism. We have lost the connection between a profession of faith in Christ, and following Christ, and baptism. We've lost that. There's no longer that link there. Jesus Christ said, unless you take up your cross and follow Me, you cannot be My disciples. And yet, how many professing Christians haven't even taken the first order of obedience and I had a relative once who professed to be a Christian, but she didn't want to get baptized because she didn't want to get her hair wet in front of everyone. Can a person's heart be born again and raptured with the Lord Jesus Christ and say, I don't want to get baptized because I don't want to get my hair wet? There's something wrong there. In the nine years of ministry that I've been involved with, and I've seen the Lord work in people's lives, and I've seen them, it seems, to start responding to the gospel, and I get excited, and I can think of at least, on the top of my head, three or four, that as we begin to move towards baptism and press baptism and encourage them to baptism, they either drastically fell away before they could ever get baptized, or Satan dropped some of the most oppressive burdens on them or trials on them and they just walked away. I've seen that happen and I know Dad has said he's seen it happen in his own ministry. There is something about baptism being associated with one's salvation, and anybody can make a profession of faith, but I have seen it time and again where when that person that's made a profession of faith tries to make the commitment, says, oh yeah, I want to get baptized, things happen and they fall, they leave, they don't get baptized. It's happened on a number of occasions.
ToddCast Podcast with Todd Starnes
Every Agency Originally Passed on the Trump Case
"Previous district attorney in New York City decided early on there was no case here. There was no story. Stormy Daniels has denied that Donald Trump ever gave her any hush money. Michael Cohen denied on record that he ever that he ever gave hush money or that Donald Trump knew about it. Period. But even if he had, there's nothing wrong with it. That is perfectly a legal thing to do as a matter of fact, William Jefferson Clinton, who committed great atrocities and sexual crimes in the oral office at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, gave hush money to the tune of over $800,000. He never saw a day in jail. As a matter of fact, Bill Clinton lied, lied, lost his law license. He never went to jail, but here we are, Donald Trump Jude, or Donald Trump, and stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen all agree nothing ever happened. No money ever exchanged hands. Everybody agreed to that. And so the district attorney said, you know what? We don't have a case here. The Justice Department stepped in and said, you know what? We don't got a case here. We got no evidence. We got no crime. We got nothing. We're going to give this a pass. Now, of course, all of this falls under the federal elections commission, so the FEC got involved, and they looked at the evidence and they said there's nothing here. So they took a pass. Even Alvin Bragg, when he first got elected, he took a pass on this case. It wasn't until outrage from the left compelled him to hire an investigator who used to work with Joe Biden that all of a sudden they came up with this allegation of 34 felony charges. And that's the information coming out from Yahoo.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Jon Ward Talks About His Faith Journey
"Most interested in your faith journey. So I'm going to I'm going to defer one moment to journalism. Where are you now? Do you believe Jesus Christ is the savior was born at a time in history crucified rose from the dead? You still believe that John ward, yes. Okay. And do you believe in exclusivity? Meaning, Christianity is the only way to God. Yeah. To eternal Salvation. I have a hard time believing that if somebody who has never called themselves a Christian or maybe has never heard of Christianity, but exudes the same type of life that Christ's commanded or kind of as a Christian would say has the aroma of Christ, if their life looks like what Christ taught, I have a hard time believing that they don't know God or they are not close to God. So I don't know for sure exactly what happens when we die. But that's how I would answer that question. And you know, I just think, are you orthodox? I mean, do you believe in hell? I don't know. I've read arguments both ways, and I don't really have, I would like to believe that it doesn't exist. But I'm not sure. You know,
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Could Trump Be Worse the Second Time Around?
"It's not, it's a little more nuanced than that, but I do think you don't credit evangelicals generally with being smart about their vote. My whole view of the evangelical affair with Trump is that the relentless ascendancy of secularism drove evangelicals into his arm and that that election was really about the Supreme Court. And that evangelicals were quite smart to go with Trump after he published his list, and they ended up with justice, Gorsuch justice, Kavanaugh, and justice Amy Coney Barrett, and that was a good deal for evangelicals concerned about freedom of worship. Response I understand all that, I, you know, my perspective was at the time and remains that he was that Trump was pretty clear about his disregard for the constitution for history for sort of the architecture of our democracy. He made that pretty clear in his comments in different ways. And I think he proved that his words meant something when it came to January 6th. So I think, you know, sure, you got a Supreme Court that you like, and we came to a constitutional crisis where we came closer than I and many others would have liked to. Okay, tangent. Tangent, John. If Mike Pence had done the wrong thing and put aside the ballots, what do you think would have happened? It wasn't a constitutional crisis. It was a riot, and it was dangerous, and I hope they're all prosecuted who broke in, but I've had this argument with Liz Cheney. What do you think would happen if Mike Pence had bought it? Well, we don't know what would have happened. I think there's another scenario where they delay it where lawmakers are killed, where they can't get enough lawmakers to actually certify the election. And I think there was talk, I think, by general milley, of concerns about Trump, you know, declaring martial law or some excuse to take military control of the country. We don't have evidence that I think John Roberts would have gotten the court together and they would have declared count the votes in about 24 hours. Maybe not that long. And they would add a Nixon versus the United States 9 zero vote and we weren't close to a constitutional crisis. In fact, my biggest argument with you about your book is you don't actually have a lot of faith that evangelicals believe in the constitution and that there are concerns about the secularization of the society are overstated when in fact I spend a lot of time talking to the alliance defending freedom, they're out there every day combating anti Christian bigotry. I mean, it's real. I've been reporting on this since 1992. It's a constant, secularization, advance that has triggered a lot of the response that you deal with, although covenant life church is different. That's why I'm trying to, that's a very different part of the general evangelical world, isn't it? You know, in some respects, coming to life was not very political. It wasn't involved with things like alliance defending freedom. And you know, I have no problem with people doing those things in through the system that we have. But I think going back to the point about January 6th, were we at the point of a coup, we don't know the point my point is we were way too close for my comfort level and we're now at a point where the same guy is potentially going to be the Republican nominee again. And if he brought us that close last time, my concern is where do we go from here if he's president again?
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
The Language of Evangelicalism
"John, I think you'll probably know. I'm an evangelical Roman Catholic Presbyterian. That means I go to mass on Saturday night and I go to my Presbyterian Church on Sunday, one river two banks, but I speak evangelical very well. Rick Warren and Greg Laurie are friends, Al Muller is a weekly conversationalist with me. I know, you know, John piper I read desiring God years ago. I know most of the stuff you talk about. I've got to tell you at the beginning. I have never heard of CJ Mahoney or Lou engel until I read your book. Never heard and I've been covering religion since 1992. So first question, do you think your perspective in testimony might be jaded by that particular covenant life church experience and these particular pastures? Well, I guess, can I ask you what you mean by jaded, just that my experience might not reflect a more mainstream experience? Is that what you're kind of? Yeah, I think mainstream evangelicalism is not anti intellectual at all. But then again, I've had doctor Mark Roberts as a pastor for 25 years. He got his undergrad and PhD from Harvard. Doctor Larry is my current pastor in oldtown is a phenomenal scholar and preacher and archbishop who is listening right now in the author of three books is an intellectual giant in the Catholic world and I've written three books on evangelicalism and this, I just think testimony is a 100% accurate about 1% of the church. How's that sound? Yeah, I think my dad raised a similar objection. When I talked to him about the book, he does not feel like a lot of evangelical culture is anti intellectual. And I think it's a totally fair question to raise. I do think that even if you haven't heard of CJ Mahaney or Lou angle, you know, I did some reporting recently. Let me deal with CJ first. CJ is not a figure on the same level as somebody like Al molar. But until about, you know, 7, 9, ten years ago, he was of a similar stature to Al mohler, if not as nationally known. So never quite got to that level, but was kind of on his way there was working with Mueller quite closely in a group of other ministers who were organizing a conference every year called. I think together for the gospel. Danny Louisville.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
Pete Buttigieg Downplays 1,000 Train Derailments a Year
"There are a thousand cases a year of train derailments, a thousand a year, are you serious? Did you know? That we have a thousand train derailments a year in the United States? Here was mayor Pete or as the residents of east Palestine are now calling him pistol Pete downplaying this massive train derailment in eastern Ohio on Yahoo news. Look, rail city is something that has evolved a lot over the years, but there's clearly more that needs to be done because while this horrible situation has gotten particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1000 cases a year of a train derailing. Obviously, they have levels of severity, but where all of that points us to is a need to continue to raise the bar on rail safe. And that's especially true. When it comes to rail that involves hazardous materials. Now this train was subject to certain enhanced requirements because the hazardous materials on board. But obviously none of that prevented what happened in east Palestinians. Now, wait a minute. There's so much to unpack there, but if you're listening to mayor Pete's comments, I gotta believe the first thing that astounds you is that the transportation secretary just seems to shrug off a thousand train derailments a year.
AP News Radio
Can climate change lose Russia the war in Ukraine? - Yahoo News
"The Biden administration's again expanded sanctions against Russia's Wagner group, and its affiliates for their role in the war in Ukraine and activities in Africa. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen announced the sanctions, saying the moves against Russia. Will further impede Vladimir Putin's ability to arm and equip his war machine. She calls the Wagner group brutal. It's a private Russian military group owned by a close associate of Putin. The sanctions target dozens of Wagner group affiliates, including some in the Central African Republic and the United Arab Emirates as well as the president of Russia's Kalashnikov concern. The original maker of the AK-47 assault rifle. They also hit a Chinese space
That's a Thing?!
"yahoo" Discussed on That's a Thing?!
"There is a really good Video essay on youtube by jacob. Geller called the soul of a library and analyzes among other things The library of babel is sort story by louis sports. The infinite library in the short story contains every conceivable permutation of twenty two letters. The comma period on the space contained with an infinite shops a four hundred and ten page books. are random and yet by the extension of logic somewhere amongst them. There must be some which makes sense. Some which means something a group of librarians called the purifiers. Destroy any books which they d meaningless away the infinity other librarians mourn. This loss. For how can you tell nonsense from a book written in uninventive language or in an uncapped code and even if it is nonsense. Does that mean that you throw would away. How do you determine the value. I look at this idea which is hard to think about makes your head hurt. Which is what. It's supposed to do. And i see the internet. Yeah jason scott. The founder of archive team is quoted saying archive team was started out of anger and a feeling of powerlessness. This feeling that we were letting companies decide for us what was going to survive and what was going to die later on the same talk. He said it's not our job to figure out what's valuable to figure out what's meaningful. We work by three virtues. Rage paranoia and kleptomaniac on one. Hand yahoo answers was a bad website. It was typical for its era. Gave us a few laughs and largely won't be missed even by long-lasting users the other hand. Hundreds of thousands of people put time and energy into making that website what it was user creations not corporate ones made it that and even if they technically have the rights to those. A lot of them aren't going to claim them. And it's way more of a collective creation the night of any individual whether you consider it the creation of talks culture of community like that takes more than one person and you can't describe the ownership of any one person's data as a way of preserving that need to take a picture of the whole So this is why. The internet has such a sense of collective ownership over these deaths protective. Even when they don't really care about the particular website or don't care for the website it may technically belonged to yahoo and that post may technically belong to whoever made it but were they to erase what we made. Put we in tallus. That's deep so there you go. That's why i think people care i understand. I really do understand better now because when you first brought this to me i thought this is like toxic and dumb and who cares if it dies but now now i cared mission to well. We can't end an episode without me ending up being sad all right so we will link to lots of things in this show so many rope to help augment your understanding of this Topic is that that is so much all right You can follow our show in apple. Podcasts spotify google podcasts stitcher and wherever podcast can also find us and the rest of the outstanding members of the upper two podcast network at alberta podcast network dot com. We had the great pleasure of being on fellow over..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"We're trickled down into whatever unit that we're in the larger company nothing changed. It did eventually but these sorts of things. Don't change much overnight but a lot has happened. Since then verizon made aol and yahoo into oath oath to sort of be just that didn't really stick and then renamed itself rise in media in two thousand eighteen twenty eighteen also when go ninety remember verizon's video service that sort of just didn't get any traction and that shut down so i think sure the company's going in another direction and also just doesn't have a good track record for a lot of original content. Now you think of something. Like i dunno on the on the Journalism side tech crunch and gadget read those blogs all the time every day in fact and a lot of the video efforts which was something that i was part of way back in the day. They don't really exist anymore. So i yeah. The add the The ad tech is is a very different beasts than it was in twenty fifteen two thousand sixteen. Yeah i also fear for the future of yahoo mail because if apollo is going to make this into an ad tech sports betting content company You don't really want to be ready to mail providers curious What what they do with those little corners of the business That that don't really fit into the the profile of being a slim and trim content company like red ventures owning seen it Or even further. Back ziff davis Which which had the magazines bought by an equity company and continue to operate the magazines for a long time. Even though zelina of ziff davis itself was not stuff like that so there will be some shakeout from this. Yahoo finance yahoo sports. Those are very successful. Still still widely used tech crunch and gadget very successful. I feel like those are probably safer hands now. To be honest. Sony announced a partnership that will see it integrate discord into quote your social and gaming experience on playstation network. End quote by early twenty. Twenty two you don't know any details. Other than that quote. Sony made a minority investment in discords latest funding round. It's not clear. What the integration is gonna. Look like whether it's a dedicated discord app on playstation Integration of discord and friends list seems to make sense could be something else. This comes after the wall street journal reported last month. That dischord had ended. Its talks with microsoft about a potential acquisition. So you're not going to see discord sold while you're going to see. Is them partner with sony and sony cash in on. Ipo is what it looks like. Yeah i mean. I used dischord every single day. I use it mostly for the podcasting side of my life rather than a purely with gaming but doesn't mean that i i see a lot of these features that the company's trying to roll out any has tried to push the benefits of of going Getting its nitro subscription. it's monthly subscription. Way you get higher quality streaming and And better quality audio and things like that and not sort of feels like it would tie nicely to a game console making Business because maybe that.
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"We're trickled down into whatever unit that we're in the larger company nothing changed. It did eventually but these sorts of things. Don't change much overnight but a lot has happened. Since then verizon made aol and yahoo into oath oath to sort of be just that didn't really stick and then renamed itself rise in media in two thousand eighteen twenty eighteen also when go ninety remember verizon's video service that sort of just didn't get any traction and that shut down so i think sure the company's going in another direction and also just doesn't have a good track record for a lot of original content. Now you think of something. Like i dunno on the on the Journalism side tech crunch and gadget read those blogs all the time every day in fact and a lot of the video efforts which was something that i was part of way back in the day. They don't really exist anymore. So i yeah. The add the The ad tech is is a very different beasts than it was in twenty fifteen two thousand sixteen. Yeah i also fear for the future of yahoo mail because if apollo is going to make this into an ad tech sports betting content company You don't really want to be running a mail providers curious What what they do with those little corners of the business That that don't really fit into the the profile of of this being a slim and trim content company like red ventures owning seen it Or even further back. Ziff davis Which which had the magazines bought by an equity company and continue to operate the magazines for a long time. even though zelina was part of nut. Ziff davis itself was not Stuff like that so there will be some shakeout from this. Yahoo finance yahoo sports. Those are very successful. Still still widely used tech crunch and gadget very successful. I feel like those are probably safer hands now. To be honest. Sony announced a partnership that will see it integrate discord into quote your social and gaming experience on playstation network. End quote by early twenty. Twenty two you don't know any details. Other than that quote. Sony made a minority investment in discords latest funding round. It's not clear. What the integration is gonna. Look like whether it's a dedicated discord app on playstation Integration of discord and friends list seems to make sense could be something else. This comes after the wall street journal reported last month. That dischord had ended. Its talks with microsoft about a potential acquisition. So you're not going to see discord sold while you're going to see. Is them partner with sony and sony cash in on. Ipo is what it looks like. Yeah i mean. I used dischord every single day. I use it mostly for the podcasting side of my life rather than a purely with gaming but doesn't mean that i i see a lot of these features that the company's trying to roll out any has tried to push the benefits of of going Getting its nitro subscription. it's monthly subscription. Way you get higher quality streaming and And better quality audio and things like that and not sort of feels like it would tie nicely to a game console making Business because maybe that.
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"Nothing changed. It did eventually but these sorts of things. Don't change much overnight but a lot has happened. Since then. Verizon made aol and yahoo into oath oath to sort of be that didn't really stick and then renamed itself rise in media in two thousand eighteen twenty eighteen. Also when go ninety remember verizon's video service that sort of just didn't get any traction and that shut down so i think sure the company's going in another direction and also just doesn't have a good track record for a lot of original content. Now you think of something. Like i dunno on the on the Journalism side tech crunch and gadget read those blogs all the time every day in fact and a lot of the video efforts which was something that i was part of way back in the day. They don't really exist anymore. So i yeah. The add the The ad tech is is a very different beasts than it was in twenty fifteen two thousand sixteen. Yeah i also fear for the future of yahoo mail because if apollo is going to make this into an ad tech sports betting content company You don't really want to be renting a mail providers curious What what they do with those little corners of the business That that don't really fit into the the profile of of this being a slim and trim content company like red ventures owning seen it Or even further back. Ziff davis Which which had the magazines bought by an equity company and continue to operate the magazines for a long time. even though zelina was part of nut. Ziff davis itself was not stuff like that so there will be some shakeout from this. Yahoo finance yahoo sports. Those are very successful. Still still widely used tech crunch and gadget very successful. I feel like those are probably safer hands now. To be honest. Sony announced a partnership that will see it integrate discord into quote your social and gaming experience on playstation network. End quote by early twenty. Twenty two you don't know any details. Other than that quote. Sony made a minority investment in discords latest funding round. It's not clear. What the integration is gonna. Look like whether it's a dedicated discord app on playstation Integration of discord and friends list seems to make sense could be something else. This comes after the wall street journal reported last month. That dischord had ended. Its talks with microsoft about a potential acquisition. So you're not going to see discord sold while you're going to see. Is them partner with sony and sony cash in on. Ipo is what it looks like. Yeah i mean. I used dischord every single day. It mostly for the podcasting side of my life rather than a purely with gaming but doesn't mean that i i see a lot of these features that the company's trying to roll out any has tried to push the benefits of of going Getting its nitro subscription. it's monthly subscription. Way you get higher quality streaming and And better quality audio and things like that and not sort of feels like it would tie nicely to a game console making Business because maybe that.
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"We're trickled down into whatever unit that we're in the larger company nothing changed. It did eventually but these sorts of things. Don't change much overnight but a lot has happened. Since then verizon made aol and yahoo into oath oath to sort of be just that didn't really stick and then renamed itself rise in media in two thousand eighteen twenty eighteen also when go ninety remember verizon's video service that sort of just didn't get any traction and that shut down so i think sure the company's going in another direction and also just doesn't have a good track record for a lot of original content. Now think of something. Like i dunno on the on the Journalism side tech crunch and gadget read those blogs all the time every day in fact and a lot of the video efforts which was something that i was part of way back in the day. They don't really exist anymore. So i yeah. The add the The ad tech is is a very different beasts than it was in twenty fifteen two thousand sixteen. Yeah i also fear for the future of yahoo mail because if apollo is going to make this into an ad tech sports betting content company You don't really want to be running a mail providers curious What what they do with those little corners of the business That that don't really fit into the the profile of of this being a slim and trim content company like red ventures owning seen it Or even further back. Ziff davis Which which had the magazines bought by an equity company and continue to operate the magazines for a long time. even though zelina was part of nut. Ziff davis itself was not stuff like that so there will be some shakeout from this. Yahoo finance yahoo sports. Those are very successful. Still still widely used tech crunch and gadget very successful. I feel like those are probably safer hands now. To be honest. Sony announced a partnership that will see it integrate discord into quote your social and gaming experience on playstation network. End quote by early twenty. Twenty two don't know any details other than that quote. Sony made a minority investment in discords latest funding round. It's not clear. What the integration is gonna. Look like whether it's a dedicated discord app on playstation Integration of discord and friends list seems to make sense could be something else. This comes after the wall street journal reported last month. That dischord had ended. Its talks with microsoft about a potential acquisition. So you're not going to see discord sold while you're going to see. Is them partner with sony and sony cash in on. Ipo is what it looks like. Yeah i mean. I used scored every single day. I use it mostly for the podcasting side of my life rather than a purely with gaming but doesn't mean that i i see a lot of these features that the company's trying to roll out any has tried to push the benefits of of going Getting its nitro subscription. it's monthly subscription. Way you get higher quality streaming and And better quality audio and things like that and not sort of feels like it would tie nicely to a game console making Business because maybe that.
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"T apps for risa announced monday at tends to sell its verizon media division which is made up largely of yahoo and ao l. to apollo global management the company will be called yahu brazen. All back in two thousand fifteen for four point. Four billion dollars and bought yahoo twenty seventeen for four point five billion dollars and will sell the combined media division for five billion dollars. So you can do the math there. The new yahoo company will include properties like yahoo finance yahoo mail tech crunch and gadgets. Most of its value likely lies in ad tech and sports betting now yahoo had to partner on bedding but apollo is licensed to more than two hundred jurisdictions for gambling. Brian media revenue was up eleven. Point four percent to two point three billion dollars in q. Four of twenty twenty q one twenty twenty. One revenue was nine point nine billion. That's up ten point four percent on the year so the numbers don't look horrible. But you know. Verizon wants to invest elsewhere for asthma also retain a ten percent stake in yahoo and brazen media. Ceo juru go robin. We'll continue to lead the company after the sale which is expected to close in the second half of this year. one point. Nine billion dollars is not nothing. It's not enough to drive your business as a networking company. I think verizon. I get what hans vestberg is doing here. He saying we're networking company will be networking as a service. Content doesn't fit in that the only way it fit would be to drive sales of our services. And it's not doing that. So let's get rid of it. Fine that makes sense. I do think that verizon had a play here to be more like comcast or at and t. where it had a content arm. At and t. has warnermedia comcast has nbc universal I think they could have built up oath or yahoo. Aol into something like that. They just didn't want to do that. Because the ad tech ear is valuable. And i think that's why apollo bought it because they're like yeah that ad tech valuable. We've got sports licenses betting licenses so we can juice up the gambling which is already making money for this so it i guess it makes sense on all all sides. I don't know what do you think. I just kind of feel really sorry for y'all who ordinarily feel for companies you know it's it's my job to not care whether they do well okay or go and but but just to tell people about it. But there's something about some of these early web properties That you just have a natural like Towards wanting to see them you know see them succeed in a in a weird sort of way and yahoo is is one of the less companies that that i can honestly feel that way about but at the same time. What is your who these days. you know. it's it's such a strange entity in the world of technology history with well over to a new book to be written about its Its lifespan and it's come a long way since it was what was it. Jerry and Jerry a guy guide to the worldwide web or something wasn't in the early days but You know. I'm sure. I've said this before and i'm sure i'll say it again. I'm sure somebody will do something. Good with the fight that a lot of people still go to yahoo homepage. A lot of people still use yahoo mail. So it's not dead in the water. i actually. You know a lot of people already know this. I worked at tech crunch. So i was working for. Aol when verizon bought aol day to day. You know by the time gets made the folks. We're trickled down into whatever unit that we're in the larger company..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"T apps for risa announced monday at tends to sell its verizon media division which is made up largely of yahoo and ao l. to apollo global management the company will be called yahu after the sale brazen aol back in two thousand fifteen for four point. Four billion dollars and bought yahoo twenty seventeen for four point. Five billion dollars and will sell the combined media division for five billion dollars so you can do the math there. The new yahoo company will include properties like yahoo finance yahoo mail tech crunch and gadgets. Most of its value likely lies in ad tech and sports betting now yahoo had to partner on bedding but apollo is licensed to more than two hundred jurisdictions for gambling. Brian media revenue was up eleven. Point four percent to two point three billion dollars in q. Four of twenty twenty q one twenty twenty. One revenue was nine point nine billion. That's up ten point four percent on the year so the numbers don't look horrible. But you know. Verizon wants to invest elsewhere for asthma also retain a ten percent stake in yahoo and brazen media. Ceo juru go robin. We'll continue to lead the company after the sale which is expected to close in the second half of this year. one point. Nine billion dollars is not nothing. It's not enough to drive your business as a networking company. I think verizon. I get what hans vestberg is doing here. He saying we're networking company will be networking as a service. Content doesn't fit in that the only way it fit would be to drive sales of our services. And it's not doing that. So let's get rid of it. Fine that makes sense. I do think that verizon had a play here to be more like comcast or not where it had a content arm. at and t. Has warnermedia comcast has nbc universal. I think they could have built up oath or yahoo. Aol into something like that. They just didn't want to do that. Because the ad tech ear is valuable. And i think that's why apollo bought it because they're like yeah that ad tech valuable. We've got sports licenses betting licenses so we can juice up the gambling which is already making money for this so it i guess it makes sense on all all sides. I don't know what do you think. I just kind of feel really sorry for y'all who ordinarily feel for companies you know it's it's my job to not care whether they do well okay or go and but but just to tell people about it. But there's something about some of these early web properties That you just have a natural like Towards wanting to see them you know see them succeed in a in a weird sort of way and yahoo is is one of the less companies that that i can honestly feel that way about but at the same time. What is your who these days. you know. it's it's such a strange entity in the world of history with well over to a new book to be written about its Its lifespan and it's come a long way since it was what was it. Jerry and Jerry a guy guide to the worldwide web or something wasn't in the early days but You know. I'm sure. I've said this before and i'm sure i'll say it again. I'm sure somebody will do something. Good with the fight that a lot of people still go to yahoo homepage. A lot of people still use yahoo mail. So it's not dead in the water. I actually You know a lot of people already know this. I worked at tech crunch. So i was working for. Aol when verizon bought aol day to day. You know by the time gets made the folks..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"To sell its verizon media division which is made up largely of yahoo and ao l. to apollo global management the company will be called yahu brazen. All back in two thousand fifteen for four point. Four billion dollars and bought yahoo twenty seventeen for four point five billion dollars and will sell the combined media division for five billion dollars. So you can do the math there. The new yahoo company will include properties like yahoo finance yahoo mail tech crunch and gadgets. Most of its value likely lies in ad tech and sports betting now yahoo had to partner on bedding but apollo is licensed to more than two hundred jurisdictions for gambling. Brian media revenue was up eleven. Point four percent to two point three billion dollars in q. Four of twenty twenty q one twenty twenty. One revenue was nine point nine billion. That's up ten point four percent on the year so the numbers don't look horrible. But you know. Verizon wants to invest elsewhere for asthma also retain a ten percent stake in yahoo and brazen media. Ceo juru go robin. We'll continue to lead the company after the sale which is expected to close in the second half of this year. one point. Nine billion dollars is not nothing. It's not enough to drive your business as a networking company. I think verizon. I get what hans vestberg doing here. He saying we're networking company will be networking as a service. Content doesn't fit in that the only way it fit would be to drive sales of our services. And it's not doing that. So let's get rid of it. Fine that makes sense. I do think that verizon had a play here to be more like comcast or at and t. where it had a content arm. At and t. Has warnermedia comcast has nbc universal. I think they could have built up oath or yahoo. Aol into something like that. They just didn't want to do that. Because the ad tech ear is valuable. And i think that's why apollo bought it because they're like yeah that ad tech valuable. We've got sports licenses betting licenses so we can juice up the gambling which is already making money for this so it i guess it makes sense on all all sides. I don't know what do you think. I just kind of feel really sorry for y'all who ordinarily feel for companies you know it's it's my job to not care whether they do well okay or go and but but just to tell people about it. But there's something about some of these early web properties That you just have a natural like Leaning towards wanting to see them you know see them succeed in a in a weird sort of way and yahoo is is one of the less companies that that i can honestly feel that way about but at the same time. What is your who these days. you know. it's it's such a strange entity in the world of technology history with well over to a new book to be written about its Its lifespan and it's come a long way since it was what was it. Jerry and Jerry a guy guide to the worldwide web or something wasn't in the early days but You know. I'm sure. I've said this before and i'm sure i'll say it again. I'm sure somebody will do something. Good with the fight that a lot of people still go to yahoo homepage. A lot of people still use yahoo mail. So it's not dead in the water. I actually You know a lot of people already know this. I worked at tech crunch. So i was working for. Aol when verizon bought aol day to day. You know by the time gets made the folks..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"T apps for risa announced monday at tends to sell its verizon media division which is made up largely of yahoo and ao l. to apollo global management the company will be called yahu after the sale brazen aol back in two thousand fifteen for four point. Four billion dollars and bought yahoo twenty seventeen for four point. Five billion dollars and will sell the combined media division for five billion dollars so you can do the math there. The new yahoo company will include properties like yahoo finance yahoo mail tech crunch and gadgets. Most of its value likely lies in ad tech and sports betting now yahoo had to partner on bedding but apollo is licensed to more than two hundred jurisdictions for gambling. Brian media revenue was up eleven. Point four percent to two point three billion dollars in q. Four of twenty twenty q one twenty twenty. One revenue was nine point nine billion. That's up ten point four percent on the year so the numbers don't look horrible. But you know. Verizon wants to invest elsewhere for asthma also retain a ten percent stake in yahoo and brazen media. Ceo juru go robin. We'll continue to lead the company after the sale which is expected to close in the second half of this year. one point. Nine billion dollars is not nothing. It's not enough to drive your business as a networking company. I think verizon. I get what hans vestberg is doing here. He saying we're networking company will be networking as a service. Content doesn't fit in that the only way it fit would be to drive sales of our services. And it's not doing that. So let's get rid of it. Fine that makes sense. I do think that verizon had a play here to be more like comcast or at and t. where it had a content arm. At and t. Has warnermedia comcast has nbc universal. I think they could have built up oath or yahoo. Aol into something like that. They just didn't want to do that. Because the ad tech ear is valuable. And i think that's why apollo bought it because they're like yeah that ad tech valuable. We've got sports licenses betting licenses so we can juice up the gambling which is already making money for this so it i guess it makes sense on all all sides. I don't know what do you think. I just kind of feel really sorry for y'all who ordinarily feel for companies you know it's it's my job to not care whether they do well okay or go and but but just to tell people about it. But there's something about some of these early web properties That you just have a natural like Leaning towards wanting to see them you know see them succeed in a in a weird sort of way and yahoo is is one of the less companies that that i can honestly feel that way about but at the same time. What is your who these days. you know. it's it's such a strange entity in the world of technology history with well over to a new book to be written about its Its lifespan and it's come a long way since it was what was it. Jerry and Jerry a guy guide to the worldwide web or something wasn't in the early days but You know. I'm sure. I've said this before and i'm sure i'll say it again. I'm sure somebody will do something. Good with the fight that a lot of people still go to yahoo homepage. A lot of people still use yahoo mail. So it's not dead in the water. I actually You know a lot of people already know this. I worked at tech crunch. So i was working for. Aol when verizon bought aol day to day. You know by the time gets made the folks..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"But it does mean that I see a lot of these features that the Company's trying to roll out and and it has tried to push the benefits of of going getting its Nitro subscription, its monthly subscription, where you get higher quality streaming and down and and better quality audio and and things like that. And that sort of feels like it would tie in nicely to a game console making business. Because maybe that means you can more easily strong and discuss the games you're playing, then you can today and that makes sense. But it also made sense for exactly the same reason. It made sense for Microsoft and from what we know that deal, as you say was concluded without without a deal. So it makes me feel like there's something else in it and I hope it's not purely Financial. As, as you say, that Sony just wants to make a buck because, you know, so No, he's doing. All right. These days doesn't I don't feel it really needs Discord to to get it over the next few quarters or anything. So I don't know. I just hope they don't destroy it because dischord did a lot very, very easy. Right? I think. Well, it's only is it going to own it discords? Going to stay independent. So I think the the chances of it being destroyed are are are very slim Jen cutter one of our daily Tech. Headlines, host pointed out that song is run more than three beta's of improved Party Chat and integration over the last couple of years. So maybe it's just discords going to fix that for Sony. Yeah Chinese like let's just Everyone likes just get better rates partner. Yeah. But we shall taking a gaming..
Daily Tech News Show
"yahoo" Discussed on Daily Tech News Show
"Yahoo had a partner on wedding but Apollo is licensed to more than two homes. Jurisdictions for gambling. Verizon media Revenue was up, 11.4% to 2.3 billion dollars in Q4 of 2020, q1. 20-21 Revenue was nine point nine billion that's 10.4% on the year. So the numbers don't look horrible that you know, Verizon wants to invest elsewhere. Verizon will also retain a 10% stake in Yahoo and Verizon media. C e. Jus Go Wrap and will continue to lead the company after the sale which is expected to close in the second half of this year. Yeah, one point. Nine billion dollars is not nothing. It's not enough to drive 5 your business as a networking company. I, I think Verizon I I get what Hans investigator is doing here. He's saying we're networking company, we're going to be networking as a service and college, doesn't fit in that. The only way it fit would be to drive sales of our Network Services and it's not doing that. So let's get rid of it. Fine, that makes sense. I do think that Verizon had a play here. To be more, like Comcast or AT&T, where it had a Content arm, AT&T has warnermedia. Comcast has NBC Universal. I think they could have built up oath or Yahoo mail into something like that. They just didn't want to do that because the ad Tech here is valuable, and I think that's why Apollo bought it cuz they're like, yeah, that had Tech is valuable. We've got Sports licenses wage. I was betting licences, so we can juice up the gambling, which is already making money for this. So it, I guess it makes sense on all, all sides, I don't know. What do you think, may? I just kind of feel really sorry, for Yahoo. I mean, hey, I don't ordinarily. Feel sorry for companies. You know, it's, it's my job to not care whether they do well, or go under, but just to tell people about it. But there's something about some of these early web properties, wage, that you just have a natural like, nostalgic leaning towards wanting to see them, you know. See them succeed in a weird sort of way and Yahoo is is one of the last companies that that I can honestly feel that wage But at the same time, what is Yahoo these days? You know, it's it's such a strange entity in the world of technology history where well over to a new book to be written about its its lifespan and it's come a long way since it was. What was it Jerry in? Who else? Yeah. Yeah a guy Guide to the World Wide Web or something wasn't in the early days but you know I'm sure I've said before and I'm sure I'll say it again..
Yahoo Finance Daily
"yahoo" Discussed on Yahoo Finance Daily
"The us department of commerce's monthly retail sales report is expected to reflect more moderation in consumer spending at the end of two thousand twenty consensus. Economists expect that retail sales were flat in over november. After a one point one percent drop during the previous month while spending likely increased steadily. On a non seasonally-adjusted basis the ramp in seasonal spending was likely lower than in previous years as the pandemic steadily worsened through the month and fewer family gatherings took place over the holidays. New amora chief economist. Louis alexander said in a note. Friday restrictions on restaurant activity resulted in sharp declines for open table data suggesting a decline in food service spending during the month however this will likely be offset to some extent by large increases in gasoline store sales considering higher retail gasoline prices during the month the november retail sales print represented the biggest drop since april's record plunge as virus related restrictions constrained spending on services and more than offset ongoing strength in good spending a nearly eighty percent plunge in department store sales and sharp declines in clothing store and restaurant spending contributed most heavily to the overall monthly drop in november but even with the month over month decline retail sales remained higher by more than four percent year over year thanks to a surge in spending on goods earlier on during the pandemic period. Total sales are set to close out the year better than they started it with our forecast for flat sales growth in december consistent with a four percent year over year gain. This remarkable feat cannot be said for many areas of the economy that continued to reel from the pandemic wells fargo economist. Jay bryson said in a note friday but retail has disproportionately benefited from a surge in good spending that said there remains wide variation in sales by retailer and we expect that these dynamics of varying sales continued last month amid rising virus case counts a weaker than expected print. In friday's retail sales report could also signal some additional pent-up. Consumer demand could come back for goods consumption in the coming months. Bryson added if sales exceed our expectations however it would be further support of our forecast that after a year defined by the virus households spent in record numbers this holiday season as the yearn for comfort and normalcy. He added for
Yahoo Finance Daily
"yahoo" Discussed on Yahoo Finance Daily
"Watching developments around georgia's senate runoffs with these elections set to determine control over the chamber and the balance of power in congress so far investors have largely assumed that republicans will maintain control of the senate albeit with a very narrow majority given. The party's recent tendency to wins in seats especially in off cycle elections still polls so far have shown a razor thin lead for both democratic candidates voting for the elections ends on tuesday georgia assigned republicans. So far have fifty seats in the senate. Democrats forty eight meaning that a democratic sweep of both seats in the state would give them a majority. Since vice president-elect kamla harris would be able to cast tie-breaking votes under a republican controlled. Congress president elect joe biden would have limited latitude to advance many of his campaign promises including raising corporate taxes and minimum wages and unveiling reforms around education housing and climate change which could all impact various pockets of the market but under a unified democratic government. A larger additional stimulus package that could further boost the economy in the near term. Might transpire a senate with a democratic majority with the to greater fiscal stimulus. We would expect around six hundred billion dollars more on top of the recently enacted nine hundred billion dollars but would also likely mean tax increases to finance additional spending goldman sachs. Economists led by jahn hotseat said a note tuesday regarding the ladder we would expect that an evenly divided senate would approve only of the tax increases. The biden campaign proposed for markets oppenheimer. Strategist john. stolis said in a note monday. He believed democratic. Sweep in georgia could spark and as much as ten percent decline in the s. and p. Five hundred from year end closing prices.
Yahoo Finance Daily
"yahoo" Discussed on Yahoo Finance Daily
"Of congress's nine hundred billion dollar stimulus deal also still hangs in the balance last week president. Donald trump demanded that the virus relief package that had cleared. Both chambers of congress be revised. The package should include two thousand dollar checks to most americans. Instead of these six hundred dollar payments included in the current legislation and other items he considered wasteful and unnecessary should be cut. He said trump had still not signed the bill. As of this weekend allowing the lapse of a number of federal unemployment insurance programs that millions of americans have joined over the course of the pandemic more than fourteen million americans rely on the pandemic unemployment assistance or pandemic emergency unemployment compensation programs benefits in both of these programs expired saturday but would be renewed march in congress's virus relief plan despite the threat equities mostly held up strongly last week as traders still anticipate a near term resolution stimulus disputes either during the trump administration. Or the next i think. Markets have basically priced in two trillion dollars in stimulus. And obviously we're not getting that with the nine hundred billion dollar relief. Bill but we know that janet yellen and joe biden are coming into office. And we know that. There's even a possibility that democrats are going to take control of the senate which all points to more stimulus with all points down dollar which all points to more ability for asset prices to increase francis newton. Stacey optimal capital director of strategy told yahoo finance on thursday so markets are quite literally. Shrugging
Yahoo Finance Daily
"yahoo" Discussed on Yahoo Finance Daily
"From yahoo finance stocks retreat from record highs as hopes for more stimulus evaporate stocks dropped tuesday after hitting fresh record highs earlier in the session as traders hopes for a larger round of direct checks to consumers faded the s. and p. five hundred and dow each ended a three day winning streak. The turnaround in the three major indices came after senate majority leader mitch. Mcconnell blocked motions by democratic lawmakers to try and quickly advanced a measure to increase stimulus payments. To two thousand dollars from six hundred dollars for most americans mcconnell also suggested the chamber would only consider the larger payments alongside other demands president. Donald trump had made including investigating election security and removing liability shields for social media companies. Neither however are likely to gain traction with democratic lawmakers late monday the us house of representatives has voted to pass a bill increasing. These stimulus checks to two thousand dollars from six hundred dollars as trump had demanded last week. Many republican senators however had objected to larger stimulus payments. during negotiations. Over the past couple of months still congress is nine hundred billion dollar package which includes the six hundred dollar stimulus payments replenished funding for loans through the paycheck protection program enhanced unemployment benefits and funds for vaccine distribution among other measures was signed into law. Sunday and despite tuesday's intraday dip. Us equities over the past few days had been benefiting from the seasonal period deemed the santa claus rally which extends over the final five trading days of the year and into the first two sessions of the new year over the past fifty years stocks have ended this period higher. Seventy seven point nine percent of the time and with an average gain of one point thirty three percent for one the best seven day periods of the year according to l. p. l. financial the three major indices are also set to post strong returns this year after rallying strongly off of their lows in march and flipping from bear to bull market with record velocity as of monday's close. The s&p five hundred was headed toward a fifteen point. Six percent rise in two thousand twenty the dow for a six point five percent advance and the nasdaq for a staggering. Forty four percent jump as big tech and software stocks outperformed for much of the year. As more businesses reopen and a- semblance of pre pandemic life returns in two thousand twenty one. Some strategists are looking for more of a rotation into the reopening and epicenter stocks. Hardest hit earlier this year as these companies. Begin to recover. We think the rotation trade is still in play and so when we look back and take stock two thousand twenty as we come to the end of the year energy and financials are really still the laggards so we think there's some room for them to catch up particularly as we get to reopening rob howarth u. s. bank wealth management senior investment. Strategist told yahoo. Finance in the long term innovation and growth still remain really important which is why we say for a secular trade for the long-term still look on dips to pick up technology healthcare e commerce sorts of names but in the short term as we get to reopening there certainly some room for earnings and revenue to catch up for these companies. That have been so hard. Hit in two.
Yahoo Finance Daily
"yahoo" Discussed on Yahoo Finance Daily
"Stocks end at record highs after trump signs virus relief package stocks jumped on monday to reach record levels after president. Donald trump signed a virus relief package following a multi day delay. The dow rose zero point seven percent or about two hundred points while the s. and p. Five hundred rose about zero point. Nine percent and the nasdaq added zero point. Seven percent each of the three major indices record intra-day and closing highs adding to their year to date gains in the final week of two thousand. Twenty trump gave approval to congress's bi partisan nine hundred billion dollar stimulus package sunday evening after objecting to the bill earlier last week in approving the stimulus package trump also signed congress's four trillion dollar omnibus omnibus bill providing funds for the government through the end of the fiscal year. Averting a government shutdown. The virus relief package included a more modest six hundred dollar payment. That fell short of trump's demand to cut two thousand dollar checks to most americans trump also called for lawmakers to cut items. He considered wasteful and unnecessary in the bill house speaker. Nancy pelosi is set to hold a roll call. Vote over a separate measure to increase the direct payments on monday after having failed to pass it through unanimous consent on thursday it is unclear whether or when the republican controlled senate would take up the measure in its current form. The stimulus package includes a host of measures to support individual americans and businesses struggling amid the ongoing pandemic. Which as of monday sickened more than nineteen million people in the us. The legislation includes approximately three hundred and twenty five billion dollars in aid for small businesses and replenishes the paycheck protection program and extends federal unemployment benefit programs and offers an enhanced three hundred dollars per week in jobless insurance still the delay on signing the bill into law created a lapse in unemployment benefits for the about fourteen million americans claiming federal pandemic unemployment assistance and pandemic emergency unemployment compensation as both of these programs expired on saturday without the new stimulus measures to renew them. There is likely to be a brief delay in restarting these programs. Under the new authorization experts have said
106.1 FM WTKK
"yahoo" Discussed on 106.1 FM WTKK
"New Year. 2021 coming up this half hour. Useless financial predictions. You'll hear repeated on TV also catching chest cheaters and some heartwarming stories from the past year. We'll have that in about 20 minutes. Well on paper test list seems like a strong contender to be the Yahoo Finance Company of the year. Stock soared and unreal 573% of one point late in 2020. After years of losses, the electric carmaker has now turned a profit five quarters in a row, earning inclusion in the S and P 500 index. Three years after it went on sale. The Tesla Model three sedan is the world's best selling electric vehicle by a comfortable margin. Yet Rick Newman, senior columnist at Yahoo Finance says they chose the video conferencing firm Zoom As company of the Year and 2020, given its own remarkable performance and the newfound cultural past time of zooming, Rick explained. Well, these first of all these two stocks stocks just had incredible performances. By the time we cut off our data. Tesla was up almost 600% for the year and zoom was up. Almost 500% Zoom, of course, was a pandemic play zoom kind of came out of nowhere in 2020 and became ubiquitous and we noted the fact that June has basically become a verb at this point, so that tells you quite a lot about its cultural relevance. Tessler just remained on the same trajectory in 2020. It didn't benefit in any particular way from anything that happened in 2020. But what happened with Tesla? Is it just Turks began to turn in a more solid performance in it just became super hot with investors so that there was a lot of momentum buying their everybody felt they had to be in on Tesla. We chose Zoom over Tesla's a czar company of the of the year for a couple for a couple reasons. First, we did the reporting on this and we think Zoom is here to stay. We think that zoom and other services like it, um have changed some important things permanently. So let's say we do get we do eradicate coronavirus in 2021. We've probably not just going to go back to doing everything the way we used to. We're probably gonna some things will change. I mean, we have learned a lot about what we can accomplish remotely. In that moment, that will be an important sort of efficiency story for the future. We also had some heartburn over Tesla a couple of things about Tesla to bother us. One of them is the way it's rolling out its self driving technology known as autopilot, which it's doing much more aggressively than any other auto maker and all the automakers have basically similar technology. And there have been some deaths in Tesla crashes where autopilot has been Uh, engaged and safety Investigators in a cut least a couple of cases have said that was a factor. So, um Tesla has some safety issues around it. And you are much the CEO. Fine. He's a genius. Hey, you know, he's um, changing the landscape for in a variety of ways for businesses and technology, But he also is always doing something controversial. In this year. It was Spewing Bogut's information about Corona virus, and he actually opened his plant against a county shutdown order for a couple of days back in May, and he's unique, but it's not exactly model behavior, so we felt we give Tesla a lot of attention. We talked about it practically every day on our Shows that Yahoo Finance but we thought Doom was the better better company for our 2020 Company of the year. We're speaking with Rick Newman, senior columnist at Yahoo Finance. One of the interesting things that you pointed out in the story, too, was that Zoom was not even really set up for individual use. Yeah, they really were able to transform themselves that this This was supposed to be a you know, a corporate tool on day two the credit. They seize the opportunity when many of us had to start working from home or working remotely like Rick Newman, senior columnist at Yahoo Finance. Coming up next predictable.